UK sees surge in pre-owned stockists

The number of UK shops offering pre-owned game sales and trade-in programmes has increased by a third over the last year.

Around 3000 stores nationwide boast some sort of second-hand service, findings by MCV reveal - up 1000 on last year.

Non-traditional game stockists are experimenting too, with Tesco, Argos and most recently Asda all introducing trade-in programmes this year.

Asda this week revealed plans to offer its service in 234 of its stores – approximately two-thirds of the Walmart-owned chain's UK branches.

GAME CEO Ian Shepherd hinted that his chain remained the king of trade-in, however. "Our pre-owned business goes from strength-to-strength – it's a strong and growing part of our mix," he said.

"No one can be bold enough to claim such a thing as 100 per cent share. Is there room for others in the market? Yes, there probably is."

He also claimed that measures by the likes of EA (with Project $10/Online Pass) to attach publisher profit to trade-in games had not dented the growth of second-hand sales.

"No, we've not seen the changes in the commercial nature of how some games have launched make any impact on the trade-in category. It's still a strong part of our business."

HMV boss Simon Fox is also optimistic about the pre-owned market, tellingGamesIndustry.biz this week that he believes it drive new release sales too.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...wned-stockists