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Which?: CEX best for buying your games

Report: games lose value faster than cars.

Videogames can lose value faster than used cars, a new report claims.

A study by consumer rights organisation Which? found a brand new videogame can lose as much value in percentage terms in just three days as a car would over three years.

Which? used the Xbox 360 version of Activision's Call of Duty: Black Ops for its November 2010 test and found it lost as much as 70 per cent of its original value when shown to shops that buy pre-owned games. A Ford Focus loses around 60 per cent of its value over three years, apparently.

CEX was found to offer the best prices for Which?'s games, both in cash and store credit.

"We were offered a hearty £33 in cash for our copy of Call of Duty: Black Ops, whereas the price GAME offered us was just £16.70. Not impressive considering we had purchased the game just three days earlier for £44.99," the report said.

"CEX also offered us £13 cash for our copy of the popular game Red Dead Redemption, which we had bought for £27.99. Blockbuster, however, gave a price of just £6.

"For our oldest game, Just Cause 2 - for which we paid £19.85 - we were offered just a few pounds in most stores. Released in spring 2010, it's a good example that sooner is better than later when looking for the best price for your used games."

Which? added: "It's not too difficult to see why so many high street retailers are happy to take second hand games off your hands. When we checked the retail prices of used video games on the shelves of stores we visited, they were as much as five times as high as the price we were offered.

"Blockbuster, for example, was selling pre-owned copies of Red Dead Redemption £29.95 - a mark-up of £24 on the price they quoted us. GAME had Red Dead Redemption on sale for around the £30 mark, despite only offering us £6.70 for our copy."

Which? offered its top five tips for selling pre-owned games: sell early, consider store credit, shop around, consider selling online and hang onto your games. Wait, that last one's not much help, is it?