Gamefly (Netflix for video games) has started buying up subscriber’s used games:
As a long-time member, you’ve been hand-selected to participate in our GameFly Trade-In Program. Now you can trade in the games you own for credit toward your membership fees!
This strikes me as an interesting business initiative… I specifically use Gamefly to avoid purchasing titles. In fact, I only own one game: Battlefield 2: Modern Combat. Which was actually my first Xbox 360 game (that I traded a pal my Xbox Live Camera for – revisiting my high school NES strategies). I haven’t played Modern Combat in probably a year, so I’ll take the $11.50 credit (minus shipping).
Gamefly’s PR rep tells me they have no intention to rent these games. Rather, they’re utilizing a third party that resells games in retail channels. Googling the mailing address used with my trade-in turns up Gamers Factory, who seem to sell through a variety of outlets.
Looks like you got a better deal than if you sold directly to GamersFactory:
http://www.gamersfactory.com/trading/TradeProduct.aspx?pid=1&ProductID=2481
The service actually works – just got an email confirmation that the credit has been applied to my account. Maybe I should look around ebay for games that are undervalued and trade them in to cover my Gamefly subscription for the next year or so… Hm. ;)
Yeah it’s a pretty sweet deal if you have a lot of games sitting around