How are you going to gather up the scratch for that $250 PSPgo? And what about its downloadable games? How about selling off some of those UMDs you won’t be able to use anymore? That’s what GameStop expects that you’ll do.
In a recent earnings call, GameStop EVP of merchandising and marketing, Tony Bartel, said that he was all for the PSPgo, and expected that gamers would be trading in UMDs to get that new system and its download-only games.
“We have a very clear roadmap as to how we can drive profitability on the sale of games,” Bartel said. “It will also be a strong contributor to our trade-in process where you have people that will have UMD games that will no longer work on that platform that will fuel additional currency for GameStop.”
I don’t see it going down that way. Despite the October 1st launch date being right around the corner, Sony has yet to tell us how our UMD games collection is going to make onto the UMD-less PSPgo. Why be hasty with trade-ins before we know how this all is going to go down? GameStop wants your UMD trade-in credit to go towards point cards, naturally. It’s just that what you get for your trade-ins may be worth much less than what Sony is going to do for you. I’d wait and see.
Sony, you need to hurry and reveal the plan for this UMD business.
[via Kotaku]
