Skip retailers, trade games with gamers
by Christopher Grant 
{ Dec 31st 2005 at 8:00PM }
Despite the fact that publishers and developers believe it
is hurting their ability to deliver quality games, the sale of used video games has become an enormous market. Retailers
have taken advantage of the urge to save a couple bucks by following a simple business model: buy low, sell high.
Gamers have been bled dry by retailers who will often offer less than half the cost of a brand new, AAA title only to
turn around and sell just below retail. If only gamers could buy and sell directly to other gamers, the Internet would
be an ideal platform for such a venture.iTradeVideoGames.com promises to "alleviates this issue by allowing you to trade your game for true market value." You can sell games for their current market value, acruing iBucks which you can in turn apply towards other games on the site. iTradeVideoGames takes a broker's fee (which they have dubbed an iTrade) of $1 for each item purchased. There is no fee for selling an item. With what appears to be a pretty substantial collection already, this site may help gamers avoid being taken advantage of by retailers; unfortunately, the industry still won't like it.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Oshi @ Dec 31st 2005 8:05PM
if tehy made quality games in teh first place i wouldn't need to trade them in for something else.
so far i haven't traded in one of my DS titles, thats all quality there. :D
bryan w @ Dec 31st 2005 8:37PM
they've got competitors gamefly.com and lendmonkey.com to name two
Fancy Joey Mead @ Dec 31st 2005 9:07PM
Amazing, they managed to invent eBay!
this is nothing new, you've been able to do this on places like half.com for years. At least their fee is cheap though, but that is mitigated by their lack of security provided by places like half and ebay.
Borat @ Dec 31st 2005 9:56PM
I have very, very few original games. Apart from Resident Evil 4 and a few other $20 games I rarely buy 'new' games. I must have saved lots of $$ by just buying used ones.
I mean, when GTA: SA came out new for the Xbox I got it for $45 used and it came free with Chaos Theory(through an offer from Gamestop).
There's little incentive for me to spend $50(now $60) to spend on a game which I will probably play for 2-3 months at most. Hail Gamefly!
Aaron @ Dec 31st 2005 10:04PM
The thing about half.com is that I was ripped off on about every other transaction and NOTHING was ever 'half off'.
Bobman32x @ Dec 31st 2005 10:40PM
Another site, which is FREE and User basied, VERY reliable and very secure is tradegamesnow.com.
Its one of my favorite sites. you trade directly with other users for thier items. Trust is baised on Feedback alot like ebay, and rarely are people defrauded, but if you have the misfourtone of being defrauded, theres alot of information to track down the theif, such as thier home phone numbers, police stations in the area of thier address, and other info.
Plus if you dont even want to Risk being defrauded, there is a safe trade option where for a few dollars (5 bucks for games, I think 15 or 20 for Consoles, since theyre heavier) where you send your item to a nuetral party at the company, and will send the items to the other person only when each parties items are recieved.
Fancy Joey Mead @ Dec 31st 2005 10:43PM
if you got ripped off at half.com all you have to do is call your credit card company, tell them what happened, and idspute the charge. They'll put the money back in your account. it is actually really easy.
Kuroshi @ Dec 31st 2005 11:21PM
I think this is okay but remember, we get the kind of games we actually pay for. Game companies will continue to make the games we actually buy. Every one talks about having uniqe games, but nobody actually buy them. GTA fargo sells like crazy and we go on complaining. I rented condemed. It was great and i reterned in 2 days later and purchased it. I hope that thru mine and others support they will continue to make different games. I bought indigo prophecy and not many others did. Completely different from any other game. Don't complain when no one tries it again. Just go to gamewhatever.com and buy max payne 7: the constipation.
The ZeroCorpse @ Dec 31st 2005 11:26PM
After some particularly bad experiences with people doing sales and trades of games online, I have no real desire to enter into a deal with some slob I don't know. As it is, right now I still have some jerk sending me abusive email and trying to get money from me for a "missing" item that USPS tracking says he's had for weeks. People are JERKS on the internet when they think they can rip you off.
No thanks to online trades. I want to deal face-to-face from now on.
murph @ Dec 31st 2005 11:46PM
i prefer www.gametz.com
"game trading zone" - very friendly people, no fees
Mike @ Jan 1st 2006 1:46AM
I just read everything on the site.
I dont even think you can withdraw your ibuck into real dollars. This means member a buys $50 ibucks for $50 and member b buys 50 ibucks for $50. They are now free to trade, but the website owners not OWN the actual $100 and the 2 members are only trading with paper. What a scam..
Not to mention they say to ship a movie without a case, lol bah. + they make seller pay shipping. I would much rather sell my games on ebay where ebay will charge me like $2 (5%) but I can just add $2 extra onto shipping fees and have the buyer pay for it. + ebay has much more security.
robbie @ Jan 1st 2006 2:09AM
game trading zone (http//www.gametz.com) has been doing this FOREVER. I used them a couple times a few years ago to trade and buy games from other gamers.
Dasutin @ Jan 1st 2006 2:19AM
Yeah I would never trust a person online to trade a game with. There are alot of people out there who never take care of there games. You get them back ruined and they don't work. What then? Thats the problem with trading with people.
http://www.dasutin.com
Bobman32x @ Jan 1st 2006 2:22AM
I thought Gametz was a pay site? when did it become free again. personally. i still prefer tradegamesnow.com, but gametz has some good people there too
biggzy @ Jan 1st 2006 9:40AM
I agree with ZeroCorpse. Trading online leaves you open to get ripped off in so many ways. For those of us who collect, we're anal about stupid things like having instruction books and artwork in good shape. There's no way to tell what condition the disc is even in on a site like this. Plus, if you're unsatisfied, you can't return it. As much as it sucks, EB will take back your pre-owned game purchase unconditionally for fourteen days (even if you just don't like it). The fact that there's no net like that in place here is going to make people nervous.
As for trades, here we go. The appeal of trading in your games at a local retailer is the ease of it all. You don't have to wait for a payment from an online buyer, carry on a dialogue with them, etc. You just throw your old games on the counter and the clerk kindly informs you that the whole stack is worth a quarter. It sucks, but that's life. EB/Gamestop make their money from ripping us off. Get used to it.
If you don't like that system, go to the trouble of selling your item on ebay or half.
Hunting_phoenix @ Jan 1st 2006 1:34PM
GameTZ went back to being free a few months ago. There is still a subscribe option, but it is once again optional.
Hurrah for GameTZ.
Scott Vieth @ Jan 1st 2006 7:06PM
GameTZ has a great system that has just gone back to a free setup, while I haven't been able to log back into my TradeGamesNow account due to a long set of inactivity ... so no love for them.
I'll give these new guys a look though.
murph @ Jan 1st 2006 8:53PM
gametz.com went back to being "free" about 4-6 months ago.
and yes, you could very well get ripped off trading online. which is why i like Gametz.com - everyone has feedback like Ebay. my last trader had over 100 good trades, so i was very confident that he wasn't gonna rip me off.