£53 GS credit and left the shop empty-handed

[rossi46]

Today, I got rid of a few bits and pieces in exchange for £53 store credit in Gamestation, but nothing took my fancy in the shop.

They don't stock retro stuff and they want £49 for an 2nd hand iPod shuffle! I have a PS2, GC and DC all in storage, not getting used at the moment and my 360 leaves me cold.

What do you suggest I spend the GS credit on?

I might just keep it til the next time I'm in the big GS in Edinburgh, who keep retro gear.

[XFile2708]

My local GS hardley does any retro stuff these days - oldest stuff they do is GBA and GameCube stuff which is incredibly overpriced...

They do have some good deals on pre-owned PSP games though across most stores...

[The Angry Jock]

£49 for an 2nd hand iPod shuffle!

That's mental!! I got mine free with Tesco dvd rentals.

I was in the Glasgow Union Street branch after work, on the way home so I take a look in the cabinet, hardly anything in it and what is there is too expensive - £25 for saturn house of the dead

[rossi46]

I'm thinking of spending it on filling some of the holes in my Saturn collection. Does anyone know if you can do this online?

[Dam]

Come to Nottingham and you can put it towards a slightly overpriced Multimega!

[aztecca]

I'm thinking of spending it on filling some of the holes in my Saturn collection. Does anyone know if you can do this online?

Gamestations online retro is censored there is never anything in stock and it hasn't been updated for yonks.

[liveinabin]

Spend your credit on storage (external HDs/SD cards/memory sticks etc) and fill it with ROMs

[rossi46]

Does anyone want to swap me a 3DO and some games for my Game card and the credit?

[RetroKingSimon]

Last time I went to Game Station, I got:

[the_b1ues]

Went into my local gamestation at the weekened all they had retro was about 10 copys of F1 for the N64.

[takesages]

Why does everyone hate on GS for not stocking stupid amounts of retro stuff? I know it can be annoying when a store overprices things but guys; it's a business. It's there to make money and there's more money in Wii Sports than there is in retro games. The fact they stock any and theres a remote chance of a bargain seems good enoguh to me.

It's like walking into a new car showroom and getting annoyed becuase they don't sell any Morris Minors.

Surely if you goal is to be retro stuff trading stuff here/elsewhere or selling whatever you owned on eBay would have been a better choice than going to GS? Even if everything you traded was new I'm sure eBay would have given you a similar sort of price for things, then you could have spent the money online, at boot fairs or in a specialist retro shop ;]

[oli_lar]

I think people on here would be a little more lenient towards GS if it wasn't for the fact they destroyed (as in chucked in an industrial compacter) retro stock.

[takesages]

I think people on here would be a little more lenient towards GS if it wasn't for the fact they destroyed (as in chucked in an industrial compacter) retro stock.

Again though, they are a business. They don't have the same goals as us. They don't care about presevering gaming hisotry for generations to come, they care about how much money they make - and while I obviously don't agree with that, if they owned the games, it's their choice. Busisness around the world in every single sector destroy stock all the time.

[Megamixer]

A lot of businesses have products/services that aren't massively profitable or successful but they keep them going purely to retain the custom and preventing it from going elsewhere.

A small section with decent stock is all that we ask of gamestation. Get rid of the trash like the old FIFA's etc. by all means but competitively-priced, quality products would get people in, people who might even buy some current stuff while they're in there too. Make sense.

[takesages]

A lot of businesses have products/services that aren't massively profitable or successful but they keep them going purely to retain the custom and preventing it from going elsewhere.

Indeed, but that's a terrible example:

1. Retro gamers are often not modern gamers at all, so it's often quite a different market.
2. There's no competition to 'keep customers' because there's only two stores in the UK anyway and very, very few specialised retro stores (again: retro doesn't make money in the vast majority of cases) - Where else are you going to go? GAME that has no retro stuff at all?
3. The product has been SUPERCEEDED and REPLACED by a next generation. To most people old games are like old models of cars, not alternative ways of playing.

Companies keep support for old products in the hope people will one day upgrade and keep thier product name in the forelight. Microsoft support old copies of Office because someoen using an old copy is better than someone using OpenOffice. When the customer does finally upgrade, they may well choose the new version of the old product. This logic does not apply to retro gaming.

I could go on.

A small section with decent stock is all that we ask of gamestation. Get rid of the trash like the old FIFA's etc. by all means but competitively-priced, quality products would get people in, people who might even buy some current stuff while they're in there too. Make sense.

I agree that if they are going to stock Retro they should do it right. Does ANYONE actually buy those FIFA copies? Again though, you're talking about 'getting people in'. Even a small retro counter is taking up premium shelf space you could throw another copy of Wii Fashion designer that will sell eight times as much.

I'm not trying to defend gamestation, I'm confused about the idea that people think they should stock Retro at all or they have some holy obligiation to make sure they know how to price them. There are so many better ways to get ahold of retro stuff I'm confused why anyone would ever consider GS anything more than a modern gaming store that MIGHT very, very occasionally have a good retro game.