Report: GAME selling 3DS consoles and games bought elsewhere as "pre-owned"

Pre-owned 3DS consoles in stock at GAME on launch weekend? If you called monkeyshines, you may be right.

According to information received by Eurogamer, British retailer GAME encouraged its staff to nip over the road to Tesco and buy up available 3DS stock with the cash from the registers.

The newly-purchased consoles and games were then to be sold as pre-owned stock.

Tesco had offered the handheld bundled with one game for £209.90 on launch day. GAME's own bundles were slightly lower priced, but featured less desirable launch titles.

This strange tactic was apparently employed to counter limited stock, with the "pre-owned" bundles to be sold at full price due to "expected supply shortage". Employees were reportedly warned not to begin offering the "pre-owned" stock until the store's original supply ran out.

GAME gave a statement on the matter saying it had authorised the purchases to help stores build up stock.

"Some of our stores wanted to move quickly last weekend to build their pre-owned stocks of 3DS at the same time as their local competitors, so we gave them a process to do that.

"It was not mandatory, and happened in small volumes."

However, one GAME employee said a store had been reprimanded for not participating.

Thanks, Joystiq.