Preowned games at Target

A habit of mine has been to scour the gaming section of any store I travel to. The reason is simple : to find good deals on games. You never know when you will find a copy of a timeless classic for a killer price or even a brand new that has been marked down for some ungodly reason. This is how I found Starcraft II for $39.99 a month after it was released. Almost immediately, I had texted a picture over to a few friends who  asked me to purchase the game for them.

My travels today took me to Target. I just needed to pick up some bath salts, a tripod and shampoo. The long walk to the electronics department left me in awe as I stared at the new Pre Owned Games section next to the $19.99 Classic Games. The games didn’t look at thing like any game that you would pick up at GameStop or even Games N Go.  They were lined up neatly, with flawless looking cases they were wrapped up in tight plastic. Had it not been for the label on them saying they were pre-owened, I wouldn’t have known. There were older titles including Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen that was available for the Xbox 360 and the Wii. According to an article on joystiq, Target plans on adding a pre-owned game section to 850 stores by year’s end.

This is interesting because now the competition for pre-owned games has become more and more fierce. It used to the be the big retailer for used games was GameStop and since then Best Buy and Walmart has jumped onto the wagon. Is this really a market that they need to join into? I highly doubt it. Something to consider is that even so the packaging looks nicer and even have that nice plastic covering you might be paying for something much expensive than it really needs to be.