By the end of February, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) had bought back unsold PlayStation games from retail shops all over Japan. According to SCEI, it bought back about 100 titles for 1,900 yen per unit. The amount of units SCEI bought back was about 300,000 units, and it ended up costing SCEI about 600 million yen.

　　SCEI's Yuusuke Kajii explained that this move is to help retailers remain healthy and keep their inventories fresh. SCEI performed the same kind of buyback program from retailers last November, collecting about 700,000 software units for 2,000 yen per title, costing Sony about 170 million yen.

　　If you remember, Nintendo's Hiroshi Yamauchi described Sony's move as a "drop in the ocean" in his address at Space World last fall.

　　Kajii also said that this is not the standard procedure and could not comment on whether SCEI would make the same move in the future. SCEI said the same thing last November when it first bought back games from retailers. Considering the fact that there are numerous unsold games in Japanese retailers' inventories, it's likely to happen again.

　　The PlayStation is the current market leader in Japan and has the greatest variety of games in its library but also has a vast amount of titles (many more than the US). Last year alone, there were more than 800 new PlayStation titles released.