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Killzone 2 the most returned game this year?
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Killzone 2, the critically well-received and universally hyped Sony exclusive, is apparently not faring quite that well at local retailers. A "Game Store" manager that prefers to remain anonymous suggested that nearly half of all of the Killzone 2 copies purchased at this particular store have been returned within two days, the highest of any game sold so far this year. Simply looking at the preowned section at my local GameStop tells a similar story, with 26 copies waiting to be resold.
It's not all grim news, however. Killzone 2, coincidentally, also has the highest resale rate, meaning most of the copies that are returned are eventually resold again. This would suggest that the total sales of Killzone 2 should actually be a bit higher than those reported since resales are not counted toward the total number of people that bought the game (only "new" sales are tracked).
What this means overall, I'm not really sure. It almost seems like there are a bunch of people that want Killzone 2 but don't want to pay full price, or people want to beat the game and take it back before the buyback price goes down. One might also assume that this anonymous manager is just making stuff up because he's a 360 fanboy, but then I'm not sure why he would cast a positive light on the resale numbers. The combination of statements seems to make it fairly believable, but this is also the limited view of a few local stores. How widespread this phenomenon is, I can't really determine.
For the sake of argument, I asked how Killzone 2 numbers compared to Gears of War 2. Apparently, Gears of War 2 had about a 20% return rate within the first 2 weeks, with approximately 30% of all total sales since it released being returned to the same store. Interesting facts, to say the least.
UPDATE: To all of those wondering, the game store I've mentioned did, in fact, break the street date and started selling the game on Tuesday. I erroneously typed "weeks" instead of "days", and that was my fault. I called the manager I spoke to before and asked more about why people were returning the games, and supposedly a few people said "it didn't work". Perhaps Sony put some countermeasures in place because the game shouldn't be out yet?
And yes, I did see preowned games, not just the empty boxes for preorders. GameStop has a nasty habit of how they treat their customers once a game has been opened. Perhaps there's a whole other story here.
UPDATE 2: There is.
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