Yah, that's actually very true. We have a store here in Lübeck called AB Games that seems to be doing quite well, if only because the people behind the desk are reasonably friendly and know their stuff. If you have a question, you can expect a decent answer, and they'll always be willing to negotiate on price.

Compare that to somewhere like Game or Gamestation in the UK or Gamestop in Germany, where they greet you with artificial mannerisms, well-rehearsed word-for-word sales pitches ("would you like to pre-order this?", "would you like additional insurance for that used game, just one euro?") and a complete lack of any insight whatsoever. It's no wonder that people see no difference in service between Play.com and Game.

There might be a niche market for that ("buy at the expert whose knowledge and experience you trust"), but in my experience so far, retail vendors know much less about the games they are selling than their customers. If I think about it, actually none of the questions that I asked in gaming retail stores has ever been competently answered. The answer was either "I don't know, but buy the game, it's great", or "Why would you want to know this?", or "Which game are you talking about?".

One of Germany's greatest chains of electronic stores recently ran an ad saying "Hey internet shops, if you copy our prices, then why don't you copy our service personnel as well?". It was absolutely ridiculous because (1) the internet vendors never "copied" the prices of that chain, they undercut it, and (2) the personnel in said chain, _if_ you can get hold of an actual human being, is usually less competent than any randomly chosen user review on the net.

Don't remember seeing that anywhere, but it sounds like the sort of stunt that Media Markt would pull.

It was. ;) The ad didn't run for long; they may have noticed that it had certain counter-productive properties. ;)

I still found Saturn's piss-take of Media Markt the best of the lot of them :) (the advert starts at 0:20).

This might interest some people.... I sent gamestation (same company) an email complaining about the aforementioned hiking of their 2nd hand game prices in the buy one get one free deal and this is the wonderfully insightful reply I got:


Thank you for your email.

I understand your disappointment. Please be assured that we work very closely with publishers to bring you the best prices possible. Regrettably we cannot always offer the lowest prices on items. If you already purchased the item, as long as it remained sealed and returned to us within 28 days with the receipt we will be able to refund the item.

Once again we apologise for any disappointment caused, however on this occasion, we are sorry but we are unable to assist further.

Obviously they didn't even bother to read it.

Yes, I do. That was the only thing that made this joke possible. I personally think it's a stroke of genius playing the two companies off against each other.
No, you confused the poor minimum-wage chav sitting at their customer service centre. Until you came along he didn't know what the rest of the keys on the keyboard were for. He was only trained to use CTRL, C and V.

My heart bleeds for Game

Does it heck with the way it has treated pc gamers over the years i am only too happy to see it go only thing i dont like seeing is people made unemployed over this.

Hopefully someone will buy up game and make it into a good company