We know, we know, it’s a very epic dilemma most of us gamers experience almost daily, where in the heck should we buy our video games? Should we pre-order? Should we order online? Should we wait all night on line at the store? What is really the best option? Well after years of expert video game hunting, we are here to tell you the deal, and where to find the best one.

It’s estimated that the vast majority of video gamers purchase their video games from GameStop/EBGames, while Amazon.com ranks a distant 3rd. Ever more recently, Wal-Mart has begun to cut into the share due its high-volume discounts on video games. While this has been detrimental for the video game giant GameStop, it may not be as bad as it truly seems. Like everything else in Wal-Mart, video games are now discounted more than usual. Just recently as of last week, we saw Black Friday sales on video games, with an estimated 10-20% off the retail price. While these are amazing deals, you must remember that Wal-Mart only carries the new game releases, and obviously doesn’t have the vast selection and other services offered by GameStop.

Just a few days ago, GameStop’s stock price took a small tumble due to Wal-Mart’s recent announcement to discount video games and give out $50 gift cards to anyone who purchases a Nintendo Wii. While we may never know if the correleation is exact, we do know that on average, GameStop’s sales have been way up for Q3 and for Q4 projections. As affluent readers in the GameShack community, we all should know by now that the video game market isn’t recession proof, and that us gamers will continue to spend the little money we do have, on video games.

In response to our original question, and not to stray too much off topic, let’s discuss on where you should by your video games. Of course if you’re looking to get the hottest new game releases, your best bet will always be to pre-order it from GameStop or Amazon.com. Let us say one thing as we have a lot of experience with this, if you pre-order a game from GameStop, you are treated like gold. Not only do you get a call, a text message and can get access to cool extras and the game itself earlier than everyone else, it’s well worth the $5 to put down to reserve the game as you will have one on hold for you. As with most new game releases, and if the game is hot enough, GameStop will sell out almost instantly, rendering the game unbuyable for the next few weeks until the next shipment arrives. Even then, you will be bewildered with lackadaisical customer service representatives who can’t check the computer inventory, may be lying to you, or simply don’t want to tell you when the next shipment is arriving. The world will truly never know or understand this process; Very similar but not as worse as the Verizon representatives, who would be dismembered if they spoke about a pre-release of a product. If a new phone was comming out tomorrow and everyone in the world knew about it, and you asked a Verzion representative about it, their response would be, “Sir I am sorry but we have no idea when this new item is coming out.” Simply ludicrious but yes this is the capitalist world we live in, and yes, GameStop employees also want to get their hands on hot new game release titles.

In regards to Amazon.com, we have found conflicting results on pre-orders. For several games, and even during our purchase of the PS3 Slim, we have to admit to that we pre-ordered it from both Amazon.com and GameStop. As aforementioned, GameStop treated us like gold. We got both a text message and a phone call that morning letting us know the PS3 Slim was in stock and ready for pickup. We then canceled our Amazon.com order as it didn’t even ship yet and headed straight to GameStop. The representatives there were even jealous of us, as he ‘jokingly’ claimed we were one of the few people in New York who had their hands on a PS3 Slim that morning, as the GameStop in Manhattan only received 5 units in on launch day. Some little kid in the store even offered us an additional $100 for it, but just wasn’t enough to break the bank.

Onto another story, as we desparately wanted to buy the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Prestige Edition, which GameStop sold out of relatively quickly, we were able to order it Amazon.com without a problem, with $10 street date shipping – simply unbelievable. As we stated before, it’s kind of hit or miss with Amazon.com. Most of the time Amazon.com themselves are shipping the game or console which is good, and unless you choose an express shipping method, it could be a while until you get the game. Of course this only applies to new product releases of any kind. If you are ordering an everyday normal item, do yourself and us a favor and ALWAYS chose Free Super Saver Shipping. It’s sometimes even FASTER than express mail services, and still boggles the imagination on how it always arrives much much earlier than the estimated date given. Do we smell a shipping fee scam? Or is it just great customer service?

Of course besides the big video game store giants, one can also revert to eBay. However, one must always be a little bit careful who they are ordering from, but with some computer literacy the average video gamer should be perfectly fine. Please just make sure the person has a decent feedback score, we’d suggest at least a score of 50 with at least a 98% rating, of course you could always go a little less. We’ve been checking out the prices on eBay and we must say that it probably has begun to rival the rest of the video game market. You can find the same hot, new game release titles, that sell for $59.99 + tax in the stores, for around $55 on eBay including shipping and taxes. Not an enormous savings, but for those not eager to get the game on the release day and can wait a few days, this can be a good savings. Remember, if you ‘annualize’ this, for every 10 games you buy on eBay at this discount, thats an 11th game for free.

With all this said and our epic stories and travels of our video game purchases, we can help devise a few easy rules into video game shopping! (Fun! Fun!)

1. If you desperately want a video game on release day, do yourself a favor and pre-order it
2. If you didn’t or weren’t able to pre-order, take your chances and physically go to Wal-Mart, GameStop or any other retailter. DO NOT CALL, you will just hear lies!!
3. If you can wait to play the game, take the advantage of savings that a website like eBay can offer you
4. If you are serious gamer, do yourself a favor and get an EBGames/GameStop EDGE card. This will give you additional discounts on trading in and buying used games. It usually pays for itself with a purchase or two, plus you get a free Game Informer Subscription, all for $15.
5. Of course we can’t get into the legalities of video game emulation and ROM-making and disc-burning and console-modding, so please stay away from this. Companies like Microsoft have begun to debug modded consoles

Enough said. Will any of this even matter in the future? Did anything we just say matter towards the future evolution of the video game market? The Download Revolution has begun. GameStop, gamers, Amazon.com, ROM dealers and pirates alike, get ready for the future of the video game market to change. Maybe in 2,3,4,5 or 10 years possibly, we truly see everything going completely digital at some point, either through downloading local video game content, or streaming content via a service such as OnLive. In any case don’t put too much stake in the current day video game giants, as the bigger they are, the faster they will burn. Blockbuster anyone? Not sure where the rest of you live but in our suburban New York area, the 3 local Blockbusters are currently in liquidation, thanks to Netflix.