ive never traded in a 360 game, yet i always sell my wii games. hmm wonder why

Is it because you value Sneak King more than Killer 7? (devil's advocate is fun!)

I've never traded 360 or wii games. Hmm wonder why

is it because you value games more than cold hard cash? (I really need to have my keyboard stipped from me while drinking)

knives you're mexican no stores around you :P

Serv, of course I have stores, where do you think I get all my tacos from?

Its Jonathan Holmes desperately defending the Wii some more, unfortunately all this proves is that casual gamers are stupid and by used games for rediculous prices.

My attachment to a game is directly proportional to the quality of the game.

Why is trading in games always stupid?

Simply go on Ebay/Amazon, see what the asking price is for you used game; call/visit Gamestop, and see what they will give you. Sure the best value is getting trade in credit, but just use that to get another game, that's most likely cheaper used than online anyways. Just do research before you trade in something. Would you rather pay Ebay to do something you can do down the street?

Also how can you compare a brand new game like Left 4 Dead to a game that came out almost a year ago - Smash Brothers. Cool article but doesn't prove anything. Also Wii Sports is essentially a $250 dollar game, considering you can't get it anywhere else. It can't be on any list because it's a package. Do you think Soccer Moms and Grandmas even know how to use Ebay/Amazon to sell their products? I don't even know if a lot of the demographic knows that you can trade-in games.

@haxan: You are mad if you trade in SSBB, you will want to play that when there are mates around some day.

If I like it I'll keep it. Viva Pinata I sold back. Got it for 9 dollars though so I made super profit.

Bioshock I keep. Obviously.

@Seth,
Sure, but I could do without my copies of Elebits and Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam much easier than I could Lost Odyssey and Xbox Arcade Collection (the only 360 disks I own as of yet). Not that I sell games at all, regardless.
My point is that it says more about smart buying decisions than anything else. There are good games and terrible games for every system. And more of them happen to be for the Wii than any other system. You are just more distinguishing when it comes to shelling out for a Wii title. And with good reason.
I certainly wouldn't trade Mario Galaxy or Twilight Princess for anything in the Xbox library. But I would part with my Wii sooner than my 360, for sure.

All kidding aside, if a game deserves a 10/10 review, if it in fact "perfect", then even "thrifty" hardcore gamers would never trade it in for a quick buck.

When a game is "perfect", that means it is worth owning, and if a game is worth owning as opposed to rneting, that means it's worth playing off and on for the rest of your god damn life. If you don't think so, if you think even the best videogames are totally disposable, then you aren't really a hardcore gamer.

Sorry, I meant to say that before the wii, the WASN"T selling as many systems.

It should also be noted that there are more Wiis in the hands of consumers. Therefore, there is a larger base to resale to. The demand will be higher because there are more interested buyers. This is too complex an issue to generalize.

ooops, sry about wall of text

tl;dr?

It's not them being financially smarter, there just playing the latest greatest thing and don't want the old stuff cluttering the place up.

Mind = blown.

@ Jonathan Holmes
You assume far too much as long as it benefits your biased arguements. Whether or not a person wants to own a game has nothing to do with a rating a game gets. Reviews and ratings are meant to determine whether or not you should play the game, not buy the game. What a person does with a game is purely personal choice, there is no golden rule to buying and trading in games whether or not you are a soccer-mom gamer or a hardcore gamer.

This isn't an indicator of quality, it's an indicator of how successful the multiplayer is. People trade in when they are either sick of the game, or beat the story.

Based on supply and demand, an extremely well selling single player game will drop to a very low price point even if it is amazing. I keep my multiplayer games just in case I want to play it later.

The conclusions being drawn are highly suspect, at least the way they're worded in the summary of the article rather than the article itself.

Supply and Demand is a huge effect here. There's quite a large supply of games like GTAIV so of course its resale value is going to be down. Games with more limited release tend to hold on to their resale value better (and eventually increase as they age if they become desirable).

Another factor is availability. Wii Sports has a relatively low availability. Every copy of Wii Sports starts out owned by a person. This makes finding a copy of the game much harder. Meanwhile a game like GTA IV has new copies filling the shelves.

Another factor can be price of a new copy of the game. As time passes and retailers want to move these copies off their shelves so they lower the price. Also possible is a release of a GotY, platinum, or greatest hits version at a lower price. Any presense of a new copy with a fixed price will affect the value of a 2nd hand copy. Arguably the fixed price of a new copy and its availability is another metric to judge games though.

Another big factor talked about but in a nonsensical way is replayability. Games like Final Fantasy and others that don't feature a good amount of replayability will drop in price faster than games that do. Many people will resell a game once 'done' with it to grab the next game. This applies to casual gamers (and games) as well as hardcore ones.

Next up is desirability of used vs new. 'Hardcore' gamers are likely to favor new new copies of the game. They want the fresh new game feel and don't want to risk a scratched disk (it's a geek/nerd thing?). Meanwhile casual gamers are likely more apathetic towards getting a new copy and will thus put more demand on a used copy. It's hard to tell if this is actually what's going on but given the data there's no way to prove or disprove it. More study would be needed to accurately determine the whole picture of what's influencing prices.

And we'll end with date. The more time a game's been out the lower its resale value (less demand). That's just common sense.

So pretty much I find the chart to be interesting but all of the conclusions to be completely worthless. There just isn't enough data about what's going on to say anymore than what the raw numbers already do.

Quite shady numbers if you ask me.

Also, I'd like to point out that you can get GTA4 used at Gamestop for $30 so that price up their is actually only $10 cheaper than the buying price.

Smash Bros, however, is still $45 used (Nintendo games hardly ever drop in price) so it's "real value" is $15 less than it's sale value.

And that's an incredibly condescending tone towards other "game journalists" I must say. They don't pick games that YOU'RE attached to so they must be "out of touch?"

Here's the game of the year titles that I've seen thus far:

-GTA4
-Fallout 3
-MGS4
-Left 4 Dead
-LittleBigPlanet
-Braid

And basically ALL of those games (save for arguably GTA4) are amazing games that have nearly everyone can have strong "attachments" to.

YOU are the exception to the rule, chief. The rest of the world isn't wrong because you feel differently from them. Hell, you're not even wrong for loving SSBB.

I know you love your Wii and SSBB is a perfectly fine game for your game of the year. Personally, I can't see how anyone could find it "perfect" or develop much of an attachment to it beyond it being a fun party game, but I've never really liked the Smash Bros games all that much. I'm more into tourny fighters like Soul Calibur, Tekken, Guilty Gear, and Street Fighter.

Seriously though, you very often come accross as a Wii fanboy who won't even give the other systems a try.

I'd never trade in a game. I consider myself a collector. The only games I ever resold were my Wii games that left my home right with the console.
I'm happy though if other people like to trade in their games, because it means that my collection can grow in a much more affordable manner.

Really? You _know_ people who give good reviews to Gears 2 and GTA IV were paid to do so?

Why are you sitting on this explosive evidence when the soul of video game journalism is at stake? You have a moral responsibility to out these people.

i never trade in my games, you don't get enough back for it anyway... you have to trade in at least 3 games to get 1 fresh one, that's just not right....