There have been many times I wish I could have bought a popular game at Wal-Mart, Target or Best Buy, but their selection is the problem. The game I want is usually sold out if they sell it, and they never, I mean NEVER re-stock their supplies. I have gone to two different walmarts for two years now and titles with spaces on their shelf have remained empty for the entire 2 year period. I do not believe it to be an issue of not wanting to buy, but one of inconvenience. For one, you have to ask a usually frustrated or annoyed-seeming and busy employee to open the case to get the title you want. That is already a check against wanting to drop $70.00 on a whim because I'm in the store. The second issue is the one that I brought up before. The title remains unstocked for up to two years without employees removing tags or replacing the spaces. I think that their store managers' ignorance about the release of games, development companies and products are the culprit here.
If they simply purchased & re-sold five copies of more than 50% of a console market's catalog, including some rarer titles, and continued to keep them in stock with anti-theft boxes, people would be a lot more willing to buy hard copies of games. That and triple A games are 70$ now compared to 50$ and 60$ over the years, and of course the console game market would be the first sales to plummet.
Inflation of common items & groceries have made consumers far more wary about their purchases. We all know that income hasn't increased while prices have.