GameStop backs Online Pass

Specialist retailer GameStop has said that it fully backs new publisher initiatives to charge consumers of second hand games for additional content and features such as online play.

Speaking to investors following yesterday's record financial results, the company said Project $10 has not impacted its sales of used games, and it believes it can help educated consumers unaware that downloadable content exists for their games.

"There have been some questions concerning first user only content and the effect on our used business," said CEO Dan DeMatteo. "We have not seen an impact thus far and as a matter of fact, we will turn this into a positive with our ability to sell DLC through our investments made in technology to market and sell this content in our stores."

Paul Raines, chief operating officer of GameStop added that the retailer is looking forward to the launch of EA's Online Pass - which will charge second hand consumers for access to play sports games online - adding that second hand consumers are not regular online players.

"We support the creation of added downloadable content for popular franchises, as we see that as extending the life of titles and broadening the base of game players," he said. "We do not anticipate an impact to our used margins due to this program. The amount of used game buyers currently playing online is low, and as it grows, our proprietary models will manage trade and sale pricing to reach margin goals."

The retailer is due to kick off a program to promote downloadable content in stores, in partnership with platform holder Microsoft, designed to simplify the process of finding additional content online.

"These stores will merchandise a limited amount of DLC and promote that digital content to consumers. Consumers will pay for the content with any form of tender including trade credits," detailed Raines.

"This process will eliminate a lot of the friction of searching and discovering content online and will bring the power of buy, sell, trade to the digital sale. The test will expand the SKU count each month through the summer, going live to our entire US store base in the fall."

The company also said that DLC is underperforming in the market because consumers are having difficulty discovering the content, and GameStop's size puts it in a position to help educate the consumer and grow the sector for the industry as a whole.

"What we understand, as many in the industry do, is that the discovery in the marketing of DLC is very under performed at this point in time and by us doing the marketing, showing it on our interactive kiosks, prompting it at our point of sale, and making the transaction seamless at point of sale, we believe we’re really going to drive this whole category not only for GameStop but for the industry," offered Tony Bartel, executive VP of marketing.

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