Last year, Best Buy and Wal-Mart began to explore the used games market, adding trade-in kiosks to select locations. Now it seems they're both pulling the plug on their experiments.

The kiosks at each store were operated by a company called E-Play, which has suspended operations according to its website (via Blue's News). Instead of trying to find another company that could fill in for E-Play, it seems Best Buy and Wal-Mart just threw in the towel. IndustryGamers was told by Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia that the kiosks were generating very little business. The machines have been deactivated and will be removed in "the next few weeks."

GameStop gets a huge chunk of their profits from the used games market so there's clearly a lot of potential in the pre-owned market. Maybe people were just weirded out by the kiosks? Most shoppers' experience with vending machines is limited to purchasing candy or counting change. Trading in $60 games is a more weighty transaction and not the sort of thing that's typically automated.