Which publishers buy back unsold stock?
The article I read stated it as the norm, which marries up to my personal experience with such things.
My sister was the area manager for WH Smith's in the South East of England for about 20 years, that kind of thing was pretty standard for most anything as part of their contracts with distributors.
Retailers buy up only as much stock as they expect to sell in a reasonable time frame, while publishers/distributors persuade them to buy as many copies as possible.
To make sure retailers don't end up getting the thin end of the wedge and lose money when they're persuaded to buy more than will sell, there's usually an arrangement for the unsold stock to be bought back so as to at least partially cover costs. This benefits both parties by giving a safety net to enable the purchase of more stock with less risk.
Similarly, these contracts also include provisions for the RRP of products to lower with subsequent restocks, since sales are obviously front loaded and lower prices keep sales up and profits comming in for everyone.
Again, what I read was that Nintendo do neither of these things, except under extremely rare circumstances.
The only example I can think of of them buying back products was that time the sale of WiiU's in Europe went down in a quarterly shareholder report, because something like 200,000 of them had to be sent back.