Amazon Joins the Secondhand Game Market

If you’re done playing with the latest video game you picked up a week or two ago and it’s just sitting around collecting dust, there’s been no shortage of what to do with ‘em as of late. You could can lend them out to friends (or if it’s a copy of Castlevania: Judgment, your enemies), you could donate the game to charity, or you could always just head on down to the local GameStop and cash it in towards another game. Of course, if you can’t just bring yourself to actually get up off the couch and drive somewhere, there’s now another player in the secondhand market: Amazon.

Earlier this week, the online retailer rolled out the beta for a new Video Games Trade-In program. The process seems simple enough. Gamers look up the titles they’re done with and click the “Trade-In” button for a predetermined price. Afterwards, the total transaction is added up for credit. The user then prints out a free shipping label, and shoots the games off to Amazon. As soon as Amazon gets the games (and presumably checks them out to make sure they’re the right games and in workable condition), the company deposits the credit into the gamer’s Amazon account.

Of course, there are a few catches to the deal (oh c’mon, you KNEW there would be, right?). For starters, the total trade-in for all the games has to equal $10 or more, so no offloading your old copies of Madden ‘04 for a quarter a piece. Also, the games have to be in what Amazon considers “good condition”, meaning it’s not damaged and includes the original case, manual, and cover art … something places like GameStop have never been one to concern themselves with. Still, less time travelling to a store means more game time, right?