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Walmart and Best Buy cease used games trade-in operations
Well, that certainly didn't take long. Industry Gamers reports that Walmart's and Best Buy's stab at tapping into the lucrative used games market will soon come to an abrupt end. E-Play, the company that distributed used games kiosks to certain locations for the two retailers, suspended operations earlier today -- and as a result, said kiosks will be shut down and removed within the next three weeks. Neither Walmart nor Best Buy looks to be pursuing similar operations without E-play. We had an inkling that the two retailers weren't seeing significant returns from dabbling in the used games market through third-party vendor E-play, but the brevity of this venture is still a little surprising. Even our "mullet and horn-rimmed glasses" phase lasted longer than eight measly months.
Wal-Mart wants your copy of NFL 2K1: Now accepting trade-ins
Adding to the already robust list of big box retailers offering game trade-ins, Wal-Mart is apparently entering the fray with a variety of less than fantastically functioning trade-in kiosks (read as: robots). Some photos were snapped by the folks at NeoCrisis and, according to the writer's experience, GameStop probably shouldn't be too worried, as no games were actually able to be traded in.Gamasutra spoke with Wal-Mart and has found out that the kiosks belong to E-Play, a company that specializes in game rental and trade-in kiosks that are hosted in a variety of locations. The current set of machines are part of a now running pilot program, found in only 0.02 percent of Wal-Mart's 3,656 US outlets. Good news, though! The machines are said to accept games from the Xbox and PlayStation 2 era as well, so you can finally get rid of that copy of Blinx you were really hoping would become rare some day!Source 1 - CheapAssGamerSource 2 - NeoCrisisSource 3 - Gamasutra
