I am pretty sure we have mentioned this in past VL blogs and articles, but seasonal clearance sales on games have become increasingly worthless over the years. The reason being is a combination of two facts. The first is that these sales are often meant to clear out the last of the old stock, and so chances are the games you are looking for have been long gone in all but a few stores nationwide. The second cause is sites like Cheapassgamer.com, who have not only made these sales noteworthy, but caused a subculture of bottom feeders that will try and scoop up all of these games at once the morning of each sale, selling them on ebay for a tidy profit. Bottom line is that if you have any sort of life, you aren’t going to cash in on any goodies without some help from lady luck.
It seems, however, that some stores might be catching on. Circuit City has a devilishly good sounding clearance coming up for the New Year, this time with a twist; “Limit three games per customer”. That means that unless you have an army of friends willing to come along, ebay scammers are going to be up shit’s creek, and considering how slowly games like God Hand moved off of shelves, there may be hope yet for this sale.
As usual, there will always be crazies who actually do bring an army with them to help organize and catalog their games and toys. On a whole, limiting purchases just may help gamers who actually want to play some of those hidden gems get a chance on to find them on their way to the work in the morning.
I have had similar situations with a local book and video store chain. It turns out that most Americans don’t like history (who knew) and so the historical books sell like cancer. So every once in a while they will mark all of the books down to ridiculously low prices and I swoop in and have a hay day.