Two of Europe’s biggest games retailers, Game and Gamestation (the latter owned by the former), have stopped selling old models of the Xbox 360, according to a report on Eurogamer.
While Game told the site that this was simply due to a focus on new hardware, a more likely reason came from a contact at Gamestation, who said that “As of Saturday 3rd September we will not be selling Pre-owned Xbox 360 Cores, Arcades and 20GB non HDMIs. This is due to the high failure rate of the console and the difficulty and cost of repairing them.”
“We will continue to trade these consoles in but they will need to be sent back to the DC as a regular faulty return where they will exit the business.”
In case anyone needs reminding, old models of the Xbox 360 — those manufactured until around 2008-09 — had a somewhat higher than normal rate of failure. And by that I mean a catastrophic rate of failure.
In case you’re wondering what they mean by “exit the business”, it shouldn’t surprise you that these retailers don’t sell every busted old console that comes in the door. I remember when I worked at EB Games here in Australia I was told all the old PS2s we stocked up were sold in bulk to a company that specialised in repairing them, repackaging them and selling them on the subcontinent, which earned them a tidy sum.
Game stops selling old pre-owned 360s [Eurogamer]
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