GameStop Confirms iOS Device Trade-Ins, Hints At Refurbishing Used Android Tablets Into Their Own Gaming Pad

Brick-and-mortar game retailer GameStop has confirmed rumors that they’re going to start accepting trade-ins of iPhones, iPod Touches and iPads, alongside Android devices.

Any Apple device will simply be cleaned up, restored to its factory settings and resold, good as new. But guess what they want to do to the “open” Android devices? Riddle them with their own in-house crapware! Why build a tablet, after all, when you can just rebrand someone else’s?

The strategy comes straight from the mouth of Gamestop company head Tony Bartel, who said in a recent interview that trading in used Android tablets offered a perfect opportunity to rebrand competitors’ devices.

“I don’t see any need to create a new [tablet] with the three hundred or so on the market already,” he said.

Bizarrely, apparently Bartel’s strategy here is to release these refurbished, rebranded tablets alongside as special Bluetooth gamepad… which developers will have to program for. Bartel mentions just doing this with one specific tablet, which is in testing, but the plan is to use Gamestop’s existing refurbishment centers to transform these Android tablets into Gamestop pads.

Insane. For all the talk about the benefits of Google’s “open” ecosystem, this is what it leads to: shitty products, malware on the official App Store and the loony CEOs of dying businesses to parasitically writhe their way into the guts of other people’s hardware. Meanwhile, buy any iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch, even if it’s used, and you get exactly what you paid for.

John Brownlee

John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.