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Wal-Mart will buy your used video games now

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Starting next week, you can take your old video games to Wal-Mart and get store credit for them. According to Carl Howe, Vice President of Research at the Yankee Group, it’s a smart move for the superstore.

I think what the retailers have found is that there’s a very robust secondary market for games. They’re expensive enough and the demographic that buys games is young enough that they’re pretty cost sensitive.”

The used game market in the US is worth more than $1.5 billion, which is not great news for game publishers. Companies like GameStop and Best Buy, however, have deep roots in the used game market.

Wal-Mart does have size on its side. Its hired an outside company to handle refurbishment of the old games that come in, and plans to start selling them at Wal-marts by the end of the year.

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