Bear in mind that after the first week, most new sales don't even really count anymore. Companies tend to gauge success or failure based off sales from preorders and from the first week or month. Some of them will look at total over time, but the sales that are likely to actually add to the count will be digital, not physical.

How it all works is that each retailer chooses to buy X number of copies from the publisher. With most of the titles you are speaking of here, they get one print run and that's it, so they already have pretty much sold what they are going to. All that remains is for the retailers to sell enough to make back what they paid for the copies (which will allow them to decide if games like that are worth stocking). Since chances are low that another print run will happen, buying new from a retailer has little bearing on things since that pretty much determines if the retailer is going to order more copies or not, but they can't order what doesn't exist.

So pretty much if you want it to "count" your best bets will be digital or buying from the publisher's website. Otherwise, just avoid resellers so you at least show the retailer that bought direct from the publisher that there is interest in that type of game and they should continue to stock them.