I wouldn't go so far as to say they're one of the worst unless you can show something very damning, not with some of these banks and companies like Monsanto around; certainly GameStop can't fuck around with our homes or food. Hell, even among retailers I'll take GameStop over Walmart any day.
Well, let me amend to "Worst Retailer in the Nation." Yes, worse than Walmart, because at least when I walk into a Walmart, the employees don't treat me like I'm some dumbass frat boy.
Sorry, I've had some horrible, horrible experiences with Gamestops in my local area (If I wanted to drive an hour down the road, the Gamestops there are actually fine, but the experiences here have driven me to just avoid the company altogether).
Apparently you missed some posts in this thread. That's fine, easy to do, but they JUST had a big promotion urging people to trade in their used copies of Xenoblade to prepare for exactly this situation, where they can have a lot of stock on hand and fulfill the demand that was created at the price that they want. I truly don't believe there was a reprint and they are opening them, they just stocked up.
Look, that trade-in offer was cool, but I'm going to imagine that the person who bought Xenoblade is PROBABLY cognizant of the rarity of the game, and wouldn't trade-in their copy for $50 bucks. Especially THAT many copies.
Likewise, I'd imagine a large percentage of previous Xenoblade owners would have redeemed their Club Nintendo points.
Couple that with a company that is notorious for doing this, and I think the OP is right on the money. It may not be a reprint, it could just be extra stock they found, too, but it's one or the other. I don't imagine many people traded that game in for $50 bucks....
If Nintendo re-printed it, wouldn't it be on the Nintendo Store as well?
Because it was also sold on the Nintendo store.
Not necessarily. There have been similar Gamestop-exclusive reprints (someone mentioned Tales of the Abyss earlier), plus Gamestop is the sole-distributor of Xenoblade in Brick/Mortar stores. IT's possible they could have opted to just send the copies to stores to drive traffic into Gamestop (very likely).