If the following news is true then it truly is crazy but highly believable. Take my game collection for instance, I have multiple GameCube, Wii, Virtual Console titles sitting around that I’ve hardly played. Perhaps I should start looking into these very much neglected titles.

Britons are sitting on a cash mountain of £1.8 billion in unused computer games, the equivalent of one game per person in the UK, according to a nationwide survey published today.

The poll, conducted by SwapGame.com to celebrate the launch of their video game trade-in service, analysed what 2,000 consumers across the country do with their ‘completed’ computer games, including where in the home they get stored.

The results revealed that one in five consumers (22%) have 10 or more computer games at home they haven’t played in the last six months. 6% of people claim to have more than 25 untouched games at home.

Despite this, gamers buy on average five new games a year, with 12% claiming to buy 10 or more games. Rather worryingly, 10% of people actually admit to throwing their unwanted games in the bin – a rather expensive past-time given that the most coveted games cost in excess of £40 brand new and can be exchanged for over £25 from SwapGame.com! The rest of us are more likely to stuff unused computer games into already bulging cupboards – 67% of us say this is our preferred location for storing games we’ve finished playing with.

The ‘Game Shelf Life’ survey also found that:

· More than one third of people (38%) have over £100 of unused games lying around at home.

· Over one in three (36%) spend only 1-5 hours playing a game before moving onto a new one.

· Men are more likely than women to have 10 or more unused computer games at home (25% compared to 20%)

· The older generation are much more likely to throw out computer games than their younger counterparts (27% for those aged 55 and over compared with 7% aged between 16 and 34)

· Almost two thirds of us still buy our computer games brand new (63%). Only 9% typically get their console games by swapping them with friends.

“We are all looking for ways to cut costs and it appears that we really should be heading for our cupboards to unlock the value we have in unused games,” said Marc Day, SwapGame founder and CEO. “If you’re holding out for the latest titles like Modern Warfare 2 or Assassin’s Creed 2, our new trade-in service means the old games you’ve got stored away can now get you significant discounts on new ones, an ideal way to save money on your Christmas shopping.”

SwapGame.com is the first company in the UK to offer an online trade-in service, providing gamers with a convenient way to trade in their unwanted games for instant credit to lower the price they pay for new games.

Comment on this post in our forums

Share on Facebook