Game Offering £190 3DS Trade-in a Month After Release

In a move that’s devilishly clever, UK retailer Game is offering a £190 trade-in price for Nintendo’s 3DS a month after it comes out.

Their new deal enables you to buy the console for £196.99 from their online store, then if you trade it in within a month you get £190 of in-store credit or £180 worth of cash.

This means, in effect, you’re paying around £7 to rent the 3DS for a month (or £17 if you went for cash).

This insanely clever deal means that Game get to firstly give you £190 worth of their store credit (making sure you spend money in their store) then, they get to resell the 3DS for the full £190, meaning they don’t have to give a cut to Nintendo.

As you’ll be aware, publishers have been a little apprehensive about trade-ins, with some companies taking measure such as including one-time codes for multiplayer. This move from Game effectively means that they can cut out the publisher/console maker and make a huge profit when they sell to the pre-owned game/console on.

They’ve also employed this on Test Drive 2, with a trade-in price of £34.99 two weeks after the game’s launch. If you trade it in by Thursday 24th February, you’ll have essentially rented the game for a fiver for 2 weeks.

While you may want consoles for more than a month, Game could simply become a rental service. If they offered a month’s leeway, with a guaranteed trade-in price of £34.99 for every game, most gamers would lap it up. It would remove a lot of the risk of paying £40 for a game that may only last you a few hours.

Publishers on the other hand must be pretty perturbed by this. I wouldn’t be surprised if this resulted in even more restriction. While it may not be something we see straight away, serial keys on consoles are possible, especially as companies increase their various online pass systems.

But I have to say, Game: well played. It may be a little underhand but it’s very good business.

via: MCV