During GameStop's quarterly financial conference call for investors and analysts, the retailer's executives gave some interesting insight on the contribution of the Nintendo Switch to the pre-owned market.

Interim CEO Daniel DeMatteo mentioned that the Switch is showing a different dynamic compared to what was seen four years ago with PS4 and Xbox One. According to GameStop's expectations, the new console by Nintendo will become a more meaningful contributor to the pre-order business in the latter half of 2018. It's "the new console on the block" and people that are buying it are playing Nintendo's franchise titles like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild, Super Mario Odyssey and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Those games are keeping them engaged with the platform.

By contrast, looking back at four years ago, it didn't take as long for the PS4 and Xbox One to work their way into the pre-owned cycle because the two consoles were competing with each other, so there were consumers that would try one, then decided that they wanted to go with the other, and traded in the initial purchase.

Chief Operating Officer Tony Bartel added that generally GameStop sees 180 days as the average time it takes for consoles and games to be traded-in in significant numbers after launch, and they expect the Switch to elongate that figure a bit.

During the same conference, the retailer's executives also talked about the performance of the Switch in general and that of Microsoft's new Xbox One X console.