DigitalBattle.com

For years retail chain Gamestop has made a fortune off trade-in games. Now other retailers are beginning to get into the action, but someone eventually decided there must be a better way for gamers to swap an old title for a new one. If you’re lucky enough to have some gaming friends it’s possible to swap titles once you’re finished, but many of us don’t have that option.

In July 2006 a site was launched called Goozex which allowed gamers to send in titles towards ‘purchasing’ other games. It’s set up on a points system based on supply and demand; the more popular your game is the more points you’ll get for it. Users pay $1 per trade and their own shipping costs, but in spite of this Goozex estimates they save their users around $20 per trade, adding up to a total of $3.7 million in savings for their clients since the site’s launch.

The service does actually seem to be offering better values than conventional trade-ins, where games trade-in values quickly decline. Unfortunately none of the GameStop locations I called were able to give me prices over the phone, but Amazon was easier to find. They value Fable II at $16.50, Resident Evil 5 at $19.50 for either console version, Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition at $6.50 and Mortal Kombat: Armageddon for the Wii at $15. The highest point value on Goozex is 1000, which can essentially be calculated at six cents per point. This means that Fable II and Resident Evil 5 are both valued at $60, Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition and MK:A are both valued at $27.