It’s long been something of a mystery to your correspondent why, in this day and age, retailers continue to stock PC games. Even in this age of universal DVD cases, a great many PC titles still come in big ugly non-standard boxes that are awkward to shelf and occupy three times the space of a console game. They attract a lower price than console versions of the same game from day one, and hold that price far less well, (they used to say that the value of a new car fell by 25% the minute you drove it off the forecourt – with PC games it’s more like 70%), which hammers their perceived value to customers. They’re easier to copy than console games, and the hideous compatibility problems that all PCs have make it tough to refuse a customer who brings it back and says “It won’t work on my PC even though I have all the right specs, give me my money back”, even though your natural instinct as a videogame retailer is to think “The little bastard’s just run it through his CD burner and now he’s trying to rip me off and starve my family to death”.

But it was while pondering the last of these that The Man In The Street suddenly realised why it is that the nation’s retailers continue to put themselves through PC-game hell, and the catalyst for this realisation was Rockstar Games’ long-awaited PC version of the world-conquering Grand Theft Auto 3. Now, by the time you read this, the worst of it will probably be over and you’ll probably be recovering on the beach at your private villa in the Maldives/the couch at your therapist/the vomit-stained pavement outside the pub/the windowledge of a tenth-floor building. But you’ll probably already know what The Man On The Street has only just come to realise. Nobody selling PC games actually expects to make any money out of them. They exist purely to generate return traffic to your store, because of course the Holy Grail of retailing is customers who keep coming back, and nobody is going to keep coming back like someone who bought PC Grand Theft Auto 3.

Browsing the well-populated and informative GTA3 forums (at, unsurprisingly, www.gta3forums.com), practically the first message your correspondent encountered (from someone apparently named “Jut1” – what were his parents thinking?) read thusly:

“I popped into my local computing game store today, I noticed that GTA3 was no longer on the shelf. The manager’s answer to my question asking why was "There’s no point in selling them if they just keep coming back". I returned my copy on Friday, since then every copy they sold before has now came back in.”

Another poster noted that “The manager [of my local retailer] informed me that over 100 copies had been returned to his store”, while yet another reiterated the truth that we all know, but no-one likes to talk about – the pirated versions of the game that people buy from their friendly local market for a fiver actually run better than the real thing, because while cracking them, pirates usually fix bugs and apply the latest patches as well.

And while GTA3 certainly seems to have been the most screwed-up rushed-out beta-test PC release of the last few months, let’s face it, it’s the rule rather than the exception. So here’s what to do, my retailing chums. Don’t bother stocking PC games (or only stock a token few, ideally the ones with the worst bug/compatibility problems. One copy of each should be plenty, since you’ll only ever be without it for a few hours at a time). If anyone asks for PC titles, direct them to Game or Dixons. (Having first tried to persuade them to just get themselves a PS2 or something and buy a version that you can make a profit on, of course.) But at the same time, tell them “If”- sorry, “When it doesn’t work, come back here.” Get yourself a broadband connection, a truckload of 15p blank CDs, and download all those whopping great 70MB patches during those long quiet hours that you’d normally spend staring at piles of unsold copies of David Beckham Soccer. Burn each one onto a CD. And then when the customer comes in and says “This won’t run”, you can tell them this:

“Well, you COULD take it back, or you COULD spend ten hours downloading the patch, or you COULD wait several weeks for a six-quid magazine to put it on their coverdisc… or you can give me 50p now – just to cover my costs, of course – and I’ll give you this CD with the patch on it.”

Bingo, one instant 200% markup, one satisfied customer who thinks you’re really on the ball, and a load of freed-up shelf space to devote to things that you might actually make some money out of. Personally, I suggest ice lollies.