I'd like to think they politely shake your hand and congratulate you on a good game well played. Somehow I don't think that happens either.

I think the reality is likely actually somewhere in the middle Mod. A lot of what goes on on XBL is down to sitting in a room on your own. Surrounded by other people, behavior will change.

Mod74 wrote:

I'd like to think they politely shake your hand and congratulate you on a good game well played. Somehow I don't think that happens either.

I know they're not your thing, and there are always exceptions, but fightgames generally seem to go along with the above in my experience.

The thing that Game have that the internet can't compete with is staff. Maybe make more of them in store. Off the top of my head, show mugshots of them with a list of their preferred consoles / favourite games / currently playing. This would possibly make me more likely to talk to the ones I had similar interest to.

Mangman has nailed it there.  Pretty much everything listed in here is solved with one thing; staff.  Intelligent, interested staff.  If your staff are engaged, and care, and have a modicum of common sense, they would clean the sticky box that just got traded in, they would recognise after the first sales question on the script that this customer isn't interested, and not ask the remaining five, they would be reading Edge or Games™ or whatever, they would be highlighting deals that benefit the customer, not the store, they would know the alphabet and, consequently, where in the trade-in section a game should go.

That said, a lot of issues are, I imagine, prescribed at a higher level.  Fifteen copies of the same game in three different places, misleading sales stickers, the entire trade-in policy.  I've lost count of the times I've had second hand games in my hands, but two are part of a 3 for £10 and one is part of a 2 for £20, or whatever, and I've given up.  Occasionally you'll find games which appear to be the only game available in a particular offer.  It's confusing and results in zero sales, as I can't be bothered working out what's best.

Have a few screens around where I can check your stock, the prices, and condition of any pre-owned games.  I'm sure I could ask staff but that would involve waiting for one to be free, and talking to them.  Usually, at least one of these is an uninviting proposition.

Part of the problem of cleaning boxes is time. We barely have time to process pre-owned games, let alone clean them up. I always make a point of at least removing any other stickers on them, but unless a box is really gross, it's going to be difficult to clean them.

Making the pitch for more hours to a regional for that purpose probably isn't going to end with an affirmative unfortunately.

We're getting a new mystery shop script soon, so it will be interesting to see what has to be asked now. I can guarantee that pre-owned and Gamecare if it's a console will be on there. I suspect digital will be on there, which is always a fun thing to fit in on a DS sale.

In my experience, with the exception of Saturdays and December, there's plenty of time for Game staff to keep their stock clean.  It is not an issue in other shops, and I don't see why it should be an issue in yours.

I'm not sure how you feel about this, g.

I was going for imbalanced, but sure.

adkm1979 wrote:

I was going for imbalanced, but sure.

heh.

I've waved the flag for some form of instore download service onto USB for years now. I realised the other day it was remarkably similar to the instore MP3 kiosks I mocked HMV for but kept quiet about it. Would be useful for games because of the file sizes being bigger and the licence transfer/trade in angle SO SHUT UP.

Maybe once USB3 becomes standard. Waiting for 10-15gb+ to copy at USB 2 speeds would take your entire lunch break.

I've seen in airports here Best Buy vending machines, where you can swipe a credit card and have dispensed a pair of $300 Bose headphones, or even an entire 3DS XL, boxed and everything.  All the receipts, warranties etc are emailed to you, info that could be easily stored in a loyalty card.

Stick all the latest releases and a handful of accessories etc in a vending machine and put them all over the place.  As long as they're somewhere with plenty of CCTV or security like airports, they're unlikely to be victims of vandalism or anything.

I think there's more mileage in that than downloads to USB.  By the time USB3's widespread enough, won't we all be happier downloading it to our cloud-centric next-gen machines while we're at work anyway?  I think a better option is linking our XBL Gamertags to our GAME accounts, so that when we're at the till they can offer us a £5 impulse buy.  Agree, and said downloadable game/DLC is credited to your XBL account, your machine is woken by request from your router, and it downloads while you're walking home from the shops.

GAME, Dante, you can have the vending machine idea for a 1% cut.

Game in Bristol didn't do anything to mark the WiiU's release. No midnight launch meant it missed out on my custom.

The man who said NO to Sat Nav.