I think it'll be limited to where they can open shop. Might be good because smaller areas tend to not have as much people who turn in old games.

Guess the best way to judge is how well comic shops do when they just sell old stuff. If there's a market in the area, then not too bad. If not, then they usually close up.

The collectors market is already jacked up because of each and prospecting. Lots of fake stuff out there which makes people more weary of buying. Maybe GS can do better weeding out fakes, but older games are a tricky business. Optical media, especially CDs and some DVDs dont hold up to the test of time. Carts can easily be corrupted and you may not know it right away. A game that boots may not play completely.

Retro is risky, and to build consumer confidence, they'd almost have to offer a healthy return program, which could bite then in the ass as people may use it too much as a rental service, which could mean more wear on quality products.

Collecting isnt something I'd recommend people get into casually, and for a store to do well at it, they'd have to have a committed customer base. Casuals may think its neat to be a collector, but GS is probably going to overcharge, and people will be turned away, or question if collecting is really for them relatively quickly once they start learning more about the finer details of what can and will go wrong with transactions.

Gamestop logic:

Buy new game for $60
Sell to Gamestop for $22
Gamestop resells for $55 (and requires annual memberships)

They've been doing a retro program intest markets for a few years now, and its available on their website. I don't know how it's going for them, but their games seem over priced, and online, there is no good way to see what you're buying. I'd liken it to Ebay sellers who use a stock picture. If I'm buying an expensive retro game online, I want as much info as possible, not a bunch of disclaimers about what I may or may not get. Anyone who owns these games and would buy more, usually knows the value of what they have, so they won't be trading the good stuff into GS, and GS can't just be the garage sale weekend shopper to get stock.

Retro is limited across the board, and there is limited appeal. Going completely retro would not save them without some serious changes to their business model. Such as putting stores in expensive strip malls, sometimes several within a few miles of each other.

I'd say retro would be much less than half. The only store I've seen with retro games basically has a counter glass display case with about 30 games in it. They weren't even what I'd say were good collectable retro games, and a quick look on Ebay and I found them cheaper in the original packaging.

It.might be nice to buy retro systems from them though, as they tend to have a good return policy for faulty products.

They would be better breaking up what valued assets they still have and put them out to auction for the competition.
There is no more financial gain for them on any trajectory in the entertainment space.

FYI, it hasn't actually been confirmed. This is just a lot of assumptions. If this is the case i would expect Sony to come out and say so. Chat bot response doesn't count as official confirmation.

People are also saying this is also an inadvertent mistake. If this is the case Sony and its customers would be best served by coming out and saying so.

If this isn't a mistake I think they need to confirm it and Playstation gamers should complain.

This is beyond nuts, this was pretty much the exact thing that the playstation execs during the ps4 era mocked the xbox one over and xbox never recovered after it, this is why you need stiff competition folks, Sony high on their own supply just like the early ps3 days where we apparently needed 2 jobs to afford one, I was a massive Ps3 fanboy mainly due to the fact that the xbox 360 pushed sony into a corner resulting in them actually trying real hard to get market share back and as a result we got crazy good exclusives, just for old times sakes like I used to do back in 2012 right here on n4g ill relist some of the major exclusives of ps3 again

Demons souls
Metal gear solid 4
uncharted 1,2,3
infamous 1,2, festival of blood
little big planet 1,2 & little big planet karting
gran turismo 5 and 6 & ridge racer 7
killzone 2,3
twisted metal
journey
ratchet and clank tools of destruction, quest for booty, crack in time, all for one, into the nexus
resistance 1,2,3
last of us 1
god of war 3 and ascension
motorstorm collection
ico & shadow of the colossus collection
folklore
modnation racers
warhawk & starhawk
sly collection & jack and daxter collection
Puppeteer & comet crash & tokyo jungle & rain & gravity crash & Echochrome & the last guy
Heavenly Sword
3D Dot Game Heroes
Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale
Mag & Socom 4
Fat Princess
Ni no Kuni, Valkyria Chronicles, Yakuza 3,4,5 (these all came to pc later )

But just think and compare this catalog of games to ps5 ?
Saros, astro bot, demons souls remake, ghost of yotei, I would have included gran turismo 7 but that came on ps4 as well so not really an absolute exclusive that one needs to buy a ps5 to play like the other 4.

We are almost in the 6th year of the ps5, the 6th year of the ps3 was around 2012 and almost all the games from the list above were already released on the ps3, now if they are really pulling this online crap every 30 days non sense its only because of a lack of competition from xbox and so they have console players by the ba**s, now I don't know whether this is confirmed or not but regardless if this is in general where their headspace is at it seems like we should be worried, its the real playstation gamers that will be affected if its true, Im not even a playstation gamer anymore but my recommendation is put your money where you mouth is and really abandon playstation if this ends up being true.

@darthv72 Yeah LIKE 14 years ago. Its like saying "Give sony flak for raising game prices, because it would have made you mad in 2012"

I find their communication to be very poor. If this is an error on their part why let people get worried about it? I understand they don't respond to rumor but sometimes they make it worse by not responding and this is an unforced error on top of and apparent unforced error.

There’s people that talked directly to people, not chat bots, that confirmed it’s real 🤷‍♂️
I expect those fans that were so against Xbox doing it to eat a whole lot of crow

It's also worth noting that the text stating a 30 day license seems to only be visible on PS4, PS5 users aren't seeing it at all.

@ VersusDMC The entire goal for us gamers is to want to avoid that lol, what if sony's servers are down or having some maintenance, many times ive just played my installed games without even signing into psn, from now one it means every 30 days I have to at the very least sign it to psn to even play my installed games, cannot even play single player games without singing in, so for example if sony just decides to ban me from psn, I cannot even play the games locally already installed on my drive that I purchased after march 2026, you don't think thats insane ? you just want to accept that ? abandon playstation right now if this story gets confirmed.
we officially have started renting games from march 2026, it was a good run we had 1994 to 2026.