Used Game Prices Tank as the Market Rewards Big Hits

It has become popular to say that the gaming industry has become recession-proof, simply because the overall sales for 2008 are up year over year…but those numbers only tell part of the story. Other sources are starting to report some troubling trends in gaming sales, not the least of which is the plummeting price of used games. These trends could lead to some troubling times for gaming in 2009.

Video Game Price Charts tracks the value of used games over a variety of sites such as Amazon.com (AMZN) and eBay (EBAY), the so-called “gray market” for games. These are people selling games directly to other people, which means no one is setting an artificial price such as used-game stores like GameStop. The data isn’t pretty: Prices of used games took a beating in the end of the year, as the chart below illustrates.

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