>>36869699GameStop employee here, the numbers are inflated. For a few reasons.
>quotasGameStop employee have to make 4 weekly quotas. 1, Used items total sales. 2, membership sign ups or renewals. 3, trade-in total value. And 4, pre orders. There's lots of tricks we use to get pre orders, lots. And that inflates what they look like.
>trade-in bonusWhen people come to sell games to GameStop, we give an extra 10% if they make a preorder. They're not actually required to pick up or pay for the game, just put the $5 down to get the preorder. If someone is bringing in a console and controllers and a ton of games to go to the next gen, that 10% is way more than the $5, so we say "you get a free pre order with this trade in, is there any games you're looking forward to?" And then we inflate thar preorder quota as well as our trade-in quota, and the person doesn't give a shit about the game. If they say there's no game they want, we just preorder a random one to fluff the numbers and get them the trade bonus anyways.
>stores employees coveringA preorder is only like $5. Most stores have a pool of about $50 between all the employees where every saturday we take some of that money and we preorder games ourselves. If my coworker need pre order quota and is only a few away on Saturday, I'll take $15 from the pool and let them ring me up for 3 pre orders. They get their quota, our sales look better, so corporate gives the manager a bigger allowance of hours to distribute to the employees. So if he makes the quota, I get more money, basically.
Don't trust preorder numbers.
