Gamestop “Suddenly” Restock Metroid Prime Trilogy. Another Scam?

A few weeks ago, Gamestop managed to “find” a previously unsold collection of Xenoblade games for the Wii, which they decided to sell at an extravagant price. Some collectors were certain, thanks to certain markings on the box and disk, that these were actually represses being sold as used so that Gamestop could maximise profits.

Well, it looks like it’s happening again. Gamestop have “found” another rare game cache. The Metroid Prime Trilogy will go on sale tomorrow at $84.99, although it doesn’t seem to be the Metroid Prime Trilogy that was released a few years ago. With no steelbook case – something that all US versions of the game apparently shipped with – some are asking how Gamestop can be selling something preowned that never existed at retail to begin with.

This has led to two theories. Either Gamestop are really hoarding rare, popular games until a time that their value peaks, and then are releasing their collection to stores, or Nintendo are for some reason willing to print up new boxes for case-less disks that Gamestop can’t currently sell (or that won’t sell at a decent price without a case).

The picture below was posted to the NintendoAge forums:

That this is the second time that this has happened in so many weeks doesn’t really tell us anything, but neither explanation is particularly flattering for the companies involved.

The Metroid Prime Trilogy was released without the steelbox outside of the US, but, naturally, imported boxes wouldn’t be marked with the ESRB rating.