Anyone who read Mikes recent rant would gather he isn't too fond of his local retailers. Some of the staff give their views on thier own in this weeks Roundtable.

Are Mikes words true about your local retailers?

Tim: In holland there are not many big game retailers. Unfortunatley, the game industry here relies on big toy-shop chains. Ok, I admit there are a few game retailers here and there but they are usually not part of a chain and start the business out of love for the game industry. They are the retailers that ROCK! They normally have very good prices, also for trading in items. The big chains i mentioned earlier do not know anything about the console or its games. Avoid them!

For the one or two game retail chains we have here in holland i can only say one thing... support them! Do not let the records/toy-shop chains decide about things of which they know nothing. Support the local game shops!

Conor: Unfortunately for me, a diehard games fan (Nintendo ones especially) the retail situation in my town isn't too good. Only one store of my knowledge sells games, Woolworths, and they are as games-educated as a bunch of monkeys. Once I asked them about pre-ordering GameCube, the woman replied "Isn't that that Xbox thing?". I just stared at her. Also, on Perfect darks release date I arrived at the store at 9am (no small task considering my sleeping habits) only to have to wait until midday for them to get it. Bet you anything GAME and other highstreet retailers would've had it upon opening time.

The games selection is limited to a few shelves (only two for GC games) and special offers are almost non-existant. So a lot of the time I find myself having to get one of my parents to drive me down to GAME or EB in Lisburn (about half an hour away). A lot of people complain about GAME but the Lisburn one is dead-on. The guys there know and love games (when I was there a few times they talk about games), in fact the manager set out him import GameCube when they didn't get a kiosk. OK, their trade-in prices aren't too good sometimes but when faced with my choice, I'm not going anywhere else. I get good offers from them too.

But I think people should support the less-famous independant retailers rather than the huge brands when they can. Or order of the net, which is what I do a lot. Not surprising, given my situation.

Jim: I very rarely sell my games to Video Games stores. If I do sell a game, it is usually when the next console is out. When this happens, I ring up a few mates, and ask them if they want a cheap games system. I sold my N64 and 13 games for $250 (125 Euros) 3 years ago to a mate. Tell me if that isn't cheap. Then the other day I sold my PS and 2 top notch games for $50 (25 Euros), and gave him another controller, and 3 memory cards. Yep, I'm such a nice guy.

Back to the story... That's not to say that I haven't traded games at EB before. But I only do this when the have a special deal on. I got $130 ($65) for 10 (crap as) PS games at my EB early this year. Which isn't a bad deal. All in all, I think the service you get at game stores is second to none. They also have the best deals, and unlike most stores, they know what they are talking about!

Will: In my area, Manchester in the UK, I would say that EB/GAME are greedy retailers. They do not buy games, but only trade, and the prices they give for trade are low, to say the least. I recently sold SSB:M. I would have got �19 trade at GAME according to the catalogue they sent out to reward card holders. But I checked out Gamestation out. I got �20 to sell it to them, or if I wanted to trade it in I would have got �23. Myabe not much of a difference, but �4 is a nice save. So , it really pays off to ring around when trading/selling your games.

Back to the original question, are retailers greedy? Then yes. Not all retailers. Some sidestreet, single shop businesses along with Gamestation have given me great prices on trade and selling games. In my experience its only GAME/EB that have given me pathetic prices on trade etc.

But these shops have great prices on games and plenty in stock, but not always knowledged staff. You can ask a staff member when is a game out for a console and they will say its not coming out on the system, or give you a release date for the PS2 when you want it for the GameCube.
In the end its just a group of money grabbing business men employing a few half whits who havent a cue what they go on about. Dont get me wrong here, the shops are good value for purchasing and have a nice reward voucher scheme, but they dont really consider the customer in it all.

They even have a few staff that actually talk sense. I think EB/GAME may have lower prices on trade in because of the reward card scheme. They have to make their money back somewhere along the line. So reducing prices of trade in games allows them to offer money off in the form of vouchers, whereas other shops dont offer a reward card scheme so can offer higher trade prices.

Thats my opinion anyway.

As one cartoon pig made a habut of saying, "That's all folks!" Until next week anyway, when we'll be discussing the many FPS' coming out soon, and which ones we'll be getting. See you there.