I don't have time to respond to that entire thing unfortunately but I'll pick a few things:
If you take away their margin, eventually it becomes a no-value supposition for them.
I'm also not really talking about a store. Do it online. Do it digital. Hell, offer people 30 bucks off your next game if they trade in/return one of your old games. Every game they give back to YOU is either
A) Money you can make in resale (which negates the whole "the publisher/dev doesn't see a penny" argument)
or
B) a game that people DON'T give to Gamestop, and thus is taken out of gamestop's chain.
What you're proposing would literally destroy the industry if they tried it now. There is a huge amount of entrenched retail competition that the industry depends on to survive in the first place and the industry can't very well price itself out of business either. There is an opportunity to do this in the form of online sales but not second hand sales, it's ludicrous and makes no business sense at all. It would require a significant investment that destroys the industry's profits and still wouldn't have the desired effect. Look at the PSP Go as an example. It failed for many reasons but not the least of which is that the rest of the industry had no vested interest in selling it to customers.
I get what you mean about the industry whining, I really do. As if some guy who crapped out the turd that is Fable III deserves sympathy in the first place. There are a lot of honest, hardworking people in the gaming industry who care very much about consumers however, it isn't all Bobby Kotick and whiners.
This comment was edited on May 18, 2011, 13:47.