Wal-Mart Machine Wants Your Used Games
Move over GameStop, there's a new sheriff in town named Wal-Mart, and he's made of metal (or at least some type of high-grade plastic). What you see to the right is a picture of the new e-Play videogame trade-in machines that they are testing out in a few Wal-Mart stores. Turns out that e-Play has teamed up with Wal-Mart to test out a few of these machines in 77 stores in New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island. Finally, I can trade in my games without having to deal with a surly teenager!
The new machines allow you to scan the bar code on a game's box, which it uses to check its database to determine which game you are trying to trade-in and how much the game is worth. It will then take the game disc, check it for damage, after which it will take the game and either put money on either a credit or debit card (with a processing time of about 2-3 days). The value of the game is determined by e-Play based on the demand for the game, among other criteria.
As stated, this is currently just a test, but I'm sure if the machines do well e-Play will be trying to implement this system in many of the Wal-Marts around the US. One of the folks of Neocrisis tried out a machine over the weekend, and seemed to run into a number of bugs, so it still looks like they have some kinks to work out. It'll be interesting to see if they offer more competitive prices than GameStop. Plus, with the reach that Wal-Mart (sadly) has in the US, e-Play could really give the current 2-ton used games gorilla a run for its money.
Trade Used Games at Walmart [Neocrisis]
[via Kotaku]
PixelPoet
Posted to Hot Stuff, Video Games on 18 May 2009
Other stuff like this: e-play, feed me seymour, trade-in, used games, wal-mart
