Fuck MS, this is too little too late! They changed their policies to more align with my views but it wasn't on my schedule so it doesn't count!

Ahh, I see what you mean, but that's the problem, isn't it? GameStop takes games back for a pittance. The trade in credit pales in comparison to the money GameStop recieves by selling them at a $5 markdown from new.

I'm not using them as a poster boy, I'm just saying that GS is harming the industry more than it helps. Of course, it's not completely GS's fault - there's enough of the blame pie to go around for developers, publishers, and distributers. The discussion here is about used games, though, so that's what I'm going to be…

I'm unsure how GS's money can only be spent within the industry? If it's referring to the fact that GS is only a game retailer, doesn't the revenue go to shareholders and higher ups?

Thrift shops don't operate at all like GS, though.

I haven't seen a Tower Records in ages and I've never even heard of the Wherehouse. I don't know of a single national chain store that is as entrenched as GS is.

Unfortunately, I really don't think there is any other way to phase out the retailer in this case. MS didn't do it in an optimal way, but they are the only ones that could have been in a position to do it. Thankfully for GameStop, popular opinion swayed their way.

There is no centralized chain store that sells new and buys back used books/cars/movies/etc. for pennies, then places the used items virtually right next to the new ones, and pushes the used items aggressively instead of the new ones and basically telling consumers there's no difference between the two. Those…

The last time a console tried to do digital gamers threw a fit.

It's probably a horrible burden because the game retailers have strangled and milked it so much that it really does cut into developer and publisher profits - I mean, are there any analogues for what GameStop does for any other product in the world?

They were doing something that may have been better for both the industry and gamers at large (trying to phase out the middle man). Whether it would have succeeded or not, or whether they would have done a good job at it is a debate that will never reach a conclusion simply because they were forced back to the status…

The problem is that we don't know. They were put in a rather unenviable position because they didn't want to piss off the retailers (and yes, they actually do matter - they contribute a large part to the sales pie). I imagine they wanted to wean the consumer off of the retailers slowly by phasing them out - although…

We never got to see whether they COULD or WOULD do it. Gamers threw a hissy fit before they could try.

Damn, that sounds rough. And scary. I'm glad you didn't suffer any long term ill effects.

Any major surgery has major chance of complications. The chances of these complications increase steadily as one ages and their constitution and immune system decrease.

So long as there's no sudden Author Existence Failure.

Wow, the Nintendogs are out in full force today.

I don't find the adult content in such games objectionable, but they are just so damned poorly written - an extension of the poorly written romances, I'd gather. I've rarely ever played a dating sim VN that didn't seem like it was written to be an idyllic self-insert romance story, which is fine, but all of the…

It's kind of the moe Flanderization that's happening to Japanese anime nowadays.

Try the Zero Escape series. It has hyper sexualized characters, but the story has nothing to do with sex or love and is quite well-written.