Walmart & Best Buy Duck Out Of Used Games Market

Walmart and Best Buy may have followed GameStop and Toys"R"Us and given the pre-owned games market the old college try, but it looks like they're going to bow out due to disappointing results. E-Play, the company responsible for exchange kiosks placed at the retail locales has now suspended operations, according to E.Play.com, and Walmart and Best Buy will probably not be looking for new and better alternatives to replace them.

Revenue generated for Walmart and Best Buy from their experiment was "underwhelming," Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia told IndustryGamers. He also said the the company's kiosks would be "removed from the locations over the next few weeks."

The chance of another business partner stepping in to monitor the quality of used games being received seems unlikely if these two big players couldn't make a system work, but second-round attempts may not be out of the question. GameStop's system is solidly ingrained into their business model, and both Walmart and Best Buy have much larger operations to worry about.

Bhatia said that based on Walmart and Best Buy's examples "it is clear the used games business is not an easy one to execute." It certainly wasn't for either of them anyway.

Did you try exchanging games at either Walmart or Best Buy through their kiosks? Do you want to see them try a different approach? Share your reactions in the comment section below.

Tags best buy, walmart