GameStop to Sell PC Hardware

I know the GameStop where I lived had some PC peripherals, keyboards, mice, web cams, and headphones. They also carried Steam Hardware. I ended up purchasing 2 more Steam Controllers when they started going out of business.
 
Seems less like growing a brain and more like desperately grasping onto anything to postpone the inevitable.
I said the same thing about Best Buy around the time Circuit City went out of business and Best Buy is still here. I think GME has a chance to stay alive especially with all the media exposure and the fiasco around their stock. I think Robinhood said almost 50% of all their users at one point has some share in Gamestop so I think it's possible they can stay afloat should they do this right. Also as someone else mentioned Microcenter is a good example of a business that is relatively niche but yet stays afloat, and I mourn every time there are GPU stock that at a Microcenter and there aren't any MC stores in my state. If Gamestop does this right it could definitely work out for them.
 
That's how it is today except they've had a limited selection of graphic cards for years. Right now the only card they have in stock is the GTX 1050 Ti. The shelf is half hard disk drives, which you'd think they'd have a bigger shelf for something as important as a graphics card. One isle used to have stuff for electronic repair and Raspberry Pi like stuff but that's gone now. They used to have a water cooling section but they don't anymore. They now sell their own brand power supply but it's the typical junk power supplies you wouldn't put in a PC you cared about. The Apple Store isn't a plus in my opinion as its taking up space that could be better used for more important things. Same goes for the Dell section, which took the place of the old Apple section since that moved into the middle of the store. Went there to other day because they gave me a card for free flash drive or micro SD card and looked for video cables and they're the same price you'd find in BestBuy. Not like it matters because the store is always packed with people, which is probably not good with COVID.
The fuck? Maybe your MC just sucks. The Parkville and Rockville always had plenty of stock of hardware til recently. the gpu shortage is just how the world is atm. The prices are as good or better then any online store. They also price match online stores. Ever since they started collecting online taxes everywhere it became very hard to beat MC.
 
They have a large footprint located throughout the country. Another aspect of this shift may be to offer site-to-store for local pickup. BestBuy already does this and I’ve used it a bit. I imagine part of the appeal could be increasing foot traffic and impulse buying, but it does seem like it is probably too little too late to save them as a company.
 
The fuck? Maybe your MC just sucks. The Parkville and Rockville always had plenty of stock of hardware til recently. the gpu shortage is just how the world is atm. The prices are as good or better then any online store. They also price match online stores. Ever since they started collecting online taxes everywhere it became very hard to beat MC.
The Paterson, NJ MC was also in an urban redevelopment zone with no state sales tax. 3.5% is better than 7%, especially when dropping $1,000+ in a visit.
 
I keep hearing on the new how state and local governments are seeing big declines in tax revenue as retail locations continue to close.
Their solution? Raise taxes (or impose new taxes) on internet businesses.
So, my guess is that eventually the cost of doing business for internet based businesses will equal or surpass the brick and mortar ones. (Basically an 'efficiency' tax)
What's old will become new again. Let's head to the mall!
The solution would be to let the federal government collect taxes so that big business don't jump between states to get tax discounts. That's what Amazon tried to do with NY when they wanted NY to pay for building their headquarters.
 
Good thing I read this article. Was completely unaware. Will watch to see how this plays out. In addition to Newegg and Amazon, sometimes I use Best Buy, Adorama and B&H. Might have to add Gamestop to the list.
 
I think people are thinking GameStop but really they are thinking Babbages, Electronics Boutique, etc.....GameStop came later (at least in the NorthEast where I was).......hell Toys R Us used to sell PC hardware and software....grab the ticket above the sealed cases in the back, collect your swag from the cage in the front.

Correct. That is why I pointed out the companies that came together to become GameStop. All of them carried hardware in that time frame. We used to cross price check each other at least weekly (it was on our store procedures) and price match one another. We used to just straight up call the competition and ask what price something was. They knew who we were and we knew who they were when they called us.
 
I did qualify my statement by saying "Gamestop-branded" stores. Electronics Boutique wasn't acquired by Babbages, Etc./Gamestop until 2005. EB was such a great store before being acquired by the beast and turned into the Canadian version of Gamestop.

All of the comapnies that became Gamestop carried hardware in that time frame. We used to cross price check each other at least weekly (it was on our store procedures) and price match one another. We used to just straight up call the competition and ask what price something was. They knew who we were and we knew who they were when they called us.
 
All of the comapnies that became Gamestop carried hardware in that time frame. We used to cross price check each other at least weekly (it was on our store procedures) and price match one another. We used to just straight up call the competition and ask what price something was. They knew who we were and we knew who they were when they called us.
Right. Gamestop unified all of their brands under the "Gamestop" name in the US sometime in 2010-2012. The last time I can recall being in a store called "EB Games" was in 2007.
 
I think Gamestop selling PC parts and gaming related things is a good move. It won't be enough to save them by itself, but it cannot hurt to have more places to buy PC hardware. Not everyone has a local Microcenter, but Gamestops are in just about every major city.

Stop the comparisons to Radio Shack... that was all management fuckery that doomed them from the top on down, had nothing to do with how the local stores were run. I used to work at a RS a million years ago.... corporate always pushed us to move the high dollar stuff that didn't move much, like computers and house brand TVs, receivers, camcorders, which had really crappy profit margins for the store. Then they went balls deep on cell phones, just about the only way you could make any money as a salesperson was to push cell phones super hard. Meanwhile they ignored their bread and butter high margin stuff like wiring, fuses, electrical components, etc... the stuff everyone thinks of when you say Radio Shack.

With Fry's going under and Microcenters being scarce, that only leaves Best Buy and locals to sell PC parts. True you can buy a monitor just about anywhere, but where do you score your video card / motherboard / power supply etc. Most of the mom and pop PC stores I used to frequent 20+ years ago are long gone. Yeah I shop at Newegg and Amazon for some stuff, but if you are impatient or in dire need (like a PSU blows up) you have to go local.
 
Once this China Flu is over with.. and all households that took up gaming are allowed to go back out in the world as normal.. then PC gaming goes back to being a "niche" area.
Once all this stimulus money is dried up, and people go back to their real jobs in the office.. then there will be less frivolous entertainment purchases such as PC parts.
Gamestop would be foolish to think they can capitalize on what is perceived as an increase in demand... Yeah.. there is increase.. but it's no way going to be this way long term.
 
I think Gamestop selling PC parts and gaming related things is a good move. It won't be enough to save them by itself, but it cannot hurt to have more places to buy PC hardware. Not everyone has a local Microcenter, but Gamestops are in just about every major city.

Stop the comparisons to Radio Shack... that was all management fuckery that doomed them from the top on down, had nothing to do with how the local stores were run. I used to work at a RS a million years ago.... corporate always pushed us to move the high dollar stuff that didn't move much, like computers and house brand TVs, receivers, camcorders, which had really crappy profit margins for the store. Then they went balls deep on cell phones, just about the only way you could make any money as a salesperson was to push cell phones super hard. Meanwhile they ignored their bread and butter high margin stuff like wiring, fuses, electrical components, etc... the stuff everyone thinks of when you say Radio Shack.

With Fry's going under and Microcenters being scarce, that only leaves Best Buy and locals to sell PC parts. True you can buy a monitor just about anywhere, but where do you score your video card / motherboard / power supply etc. Most of the mom and pop PC stores I used to frequent 20+ years ago are long gone. Yeah I shop at Newegg and Amazon for some stuff, but if you are impatient or in dire need (like a PSU blows up) you have to go local.
I worked at RadioShack while Len Roberts was busy reimagining the stores into glorified cell phone kiosks and I agree. It didn't help that there were so many RadioShack locations (there were 3 in the town that I worked in), but the focus shift to the high priced, low margin products really doomed them, in my opinion. Prior to that, the motto was PB&A (parts, batteries, and accessories) because that was where the money was. Of the 3 stores in the town, the one that I worked at was chosen to consolidate this aspect of the business so that the others could focus on cell phones, TVs, and home theater systems. That store was still in operation right up to the end, while the other two fizzled years earlier.
 
It didn't help that there were so many RadioShack locations (there were 3 in the town that I worked in)

Yeah they had too many stores. When I was in Lubbock I think there 5 stores.... for those who haven't been to Lubbock, you can drive from one end of the town to the other in like 15 minutes (or at least you could in 1992). Too many stores were just cannibalizing each other's sales. And some of them were DUMPS and tiny.... just what was the point? It's not 7-11, you don't need them to be in walking distance of each other LOL

I guess you could say the same thing about Gamestop, good ones, bad ones etc.
 
Gamestop has product pages up for GPUs. Their prices are higher then NE. I was expect full on scapler pricing.
 
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Once this China Flu is over
You know Americans got the virus from Europe mostly.
with.. and all households that took up gaming are allowed to go back out in the world as normal.. then PC gaming goes back to being a "niche" area.
That won't happen. We're at the point where Pandora's box is open and can never be shut. Lots of people who haven't paid rent or mortgages will probably be homeless once the restrictions are removed. At some point in 2021 a lot of homelessness will occur and the job market will get worse, unless Joe Biden continues to give away free money. People aren't going to drive to the office when they don't have to, thus killing a lot of jobs that depends on people driving to and from work. The businesses that closed down aren't coming back and nothing is going to replace them. If anything the needs for electronics is going to continue to boom as more people work from home and more people don't work at all.
Once all this stimulus money is dried up, and people go back to their real jobs in the office.. then there will be less frivolous entertainment purchases such as PC parts.
If you work at an office job then chances are you're working during the pandemic. I doubt most employees would want you to come back to the office and waste resources. When the stimulus money dries up then that's when the economy crashes. Stock market will crash. Housing market will crash. Everything will crash. It'll happen once Joe Biden allows land lords to go after their renters, and when the stimulus checks end. Crypto currency will continue to rise in value, which will push more people to buy hardware to mine and make a living.
Gamestop would be foolish to think they can capitalize on what is perceived as an increase in demand... Yeah.. there is increase.. but it's no way going to be this way long term.
This is end game capitalism. We either move towards a UBI or have a holiday where we purge all the people we deem financially unworthy. That means a lot of people sitting at home playing video games. This is still 2008 that continues to wreck havoc to people because we fail to acknowledge that our financial and employment system has totally failed. You may not like this future but this is the future we deserve.
 
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You know Americans go the virus from Europe mostly.
And Europe got it from China, who knowingly covered it up and let it spread throughout the world on purpose. All this shit we've been dealing with for a year is China's fault, their goal was to level the playing field. Looks like it worked. While were over hear fighting with each other, China is building like crazy & laughing all the way to the bank.
 
I think people are thinking GameStop but really they are thinking Babbages, Electronics Boutique, etc.....GameStop came later (at least in the NorthEast where I was).......hell Toys R Us used to sell PC hardware and software....grab the ticket above the sealed cases in the back, collect your swag from the cage in the front.
Gamestop is Babbage's, and Gamestop bought EB.
 
When the stimulus money dries up then that's when the economy crashes. Stock market will crash. Housing market will crash. Everything will crash. It'll happen once Joe Biden allows land lords to go after their renters, and when the stimulus checks end. Crypto currency will continue to rise in value, which will push more people to buy hardware to mine and make a living.
The majority of people have no idea what crypto currency is, outside our little bubble of internet forums. When the crash happens, they're not going to be worried about buying graphics cards or machines to mine monopoly money. How are you going to mine bitcoin when you don't have a place to live or electricity to use? I doubt their going to be day trading bitcoin either. So, it'll all end up in the accounts of people who can afford it, the very definition of a pyramid scheme.
 
GameStop will probably have a few Steam gift cards available at Checkout and call it the 'PC Hardware' section...
 
Honestly, if Gamestop wants to survive as a brick and mortar store, they need to become a cafe of some sort. Sell food, drinks, specialty stuff like Ramune soda, and have a place for people to sit and play. Also, going back to having a decent retro section would be welcome.

Oh yeah...stop ruining new game boxes with giant stickers, hard selling your dumb club, acting like a pawn shop, and hiring people who can perform customer service without an attitude. Well..to be fair, there are some cool people who work there.

No one is going to Gamestop to buy a TV. They're going to Best Buy or Amazon. Nobody will go there to buy a PC. They'll go to New Egg or Microcenter. Game sales are going digital so we don't have a reason to visit for games. Amazon makes it super easy to order controllers and other accessories online for less money then at Gamestop, so there goes that. The little geek life stuff is neat in theory, but most people balk when it comes time to layout the money.

Their sales model is dying. Time to create a new reason to visit.
 
Honestly, if Gamestop wants to survive as a brick and mortar store, they need to become a cafe of some sort. Sell food, drinks, specialty stuff like Ramune soda, and have a place for people to sit and play. Also, going back to having a decent retro section would be welcome.

Oh yeah...stop ruining new game boxes with giant stickers, hard selling your dumb club, acting like a pawn shop, and hiring people who can perform customer service without an attitude. Well..to be fair, there are some cool people who work there.

No one is going to Gamestop to buy a TV. They're going to Best Buy or Amazon. Nobody will go there to buy a PC. They'll go to New Egg or Microcenter. Game sales are going digital so we don't have a reason to visit for games. Amazon makes it super easy to order controllers and other accessories online for less money then at Gamestop, so there goes that. The little geek life stuff is neat in theory, but most people balk when it comes time to layout the money.

Their sales model is dying. Time to create a new reason to visit.
Incorporating a new product line to grow sales appears to be exactly what they're trying. It has been mentioned a number of times before, but they have a lot of stores across the country and I would imagine that they could be more convenient than BestBuy and MicroCenter (who has a total of what, a dozen stores across the entire US?) for some people.
 
Honestly, if Gamestop wants to survive as a brick and mortar store, they need to become a cafe of some sort. Sell food, drinks, specialty stuff like Ramune soda, and have a place for people to sit and play. Also, going back to having a decent retro section would be welcome.

Oh yeah...stop ruining new game boxes with giant stickers, hard selling your dumb club, acting like a pawn shop, and hiring people who can perform customer service without an attitude. Well..to be fair, there are some cool people who work there.

No one is going to Gamestop to buy a TV. They're going to Best Buy or Amazon. Nobody will go there to buy a PC. They'll go to New Egg or Microcenter. Game sales are going digital so we don't have a reason to visit for games. Amazon makes it super easy to order controllers and other accessories online for less money then at Gamestop, so there goes that. The little geek life stuff is neat in theory, but most people balk when it comes time to layout the money.

Their sales model is dying. Time to create a new reason to visit.
Amazon doesn't make it easy to order controller. 90% they list are fucking fakes. Granted GS never has stock of anything either. Also with the chewy ceo joining it is though they are going to go to online only. They been shutting down stores left and right. Their stores are too damn small to be any sort of cafe and they are not in the buissnes of buying/renting new buildings. They just need to go away already.
 
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Incorporating a new product line to grow sales appears to be exactly what they're trying. It has been mentioned a number of times before, but they have a lot of stores across the country and I would imagine that they could be more convenient than BestBuy and MicroCenter (who has a total of what, a dozen stores across the entire US?) for some people.
My point was they’re incorporating the wrong the new product if they want to stay Brick and mortar.
 
Amazon doesn't make it easy to order controller. 90% they list are fucking fakes. Granted GS never has stock of anything either. Also with the chewy ceo joining it is though they are going to go to online only. They been shutting down stores left and right. Their stores are too damn small to be any sort of cafe and they are not in the buissnes of buying/renting new buildings. They just need to go away already.

Never had that issue, but I generally don’t buy from third party sellers.
 
One day in the future, when everyone goes outside and doesnt give a fuck about mining ETH (v2) or gaming, GPU's won't be special, and this idea will flop and not work for the same reason it never was considered before the chip shortage.
 
And Europe got it from China, who knowingly covered it up and let it spread throughout the world on purpose. All this shit we've been dealing with for a year is China's fault, their goal was to level the playing field. Looks like it worked. While were over hear fighting with each other, China is building like crazy & laughing all the way to the bank.
If you haven't noticed, but a lot of countries have failed to contain the virus. The reason it spread around is because every countries economy is connected to each other. This is why computers can have parts that are sourced from all over the world, and with it comes the people that bring diseases. The virus spread because money is greater than living.

The majority of people have no idea what crypto currency is, outside our little bubble of internet forums.
Most people are functionally illiterate. All they need to know is that computers are like money printers. That's enough to get them to go out and buy computers to print money.
When the crash happens, they're not going to be worried about buying graphics cards or machines to mine monopoly money. How are you going to mine bitcoin when you don't have a place to live or electricity to use?
This is where you have people moving in with friends and family, or just run a crypto miner outside of McDonalds or their car. Motor homes are popular I hear right now.


One day in the future, when everyone goes outside and doesnt give a fuck about mining ETH (v2) or gaming, GPU's won't be special, and this idea will flop and not work for the same reason it never was considered before the chip shortage.
More likely the future of gaming will be on APU's. The price of a GPU has skyrocketed to the point where an affordable APU makes sense.
 
Yeah, I’d bet that APUs are going to be where it’s at in the future. DDR5 bandwidth and updated architectures will improve “bottom line” performance significantly.

I don’t think we’ll get console-scale APUs on the PC for a while yet, though. Maybe expect to see more tiny boxes like Intel’s new gaming NUC with RTX 2060 for the “high end”.
 
More likely the future of gaming will be on APU's. The price of a GPU has skyrocketed to the point where an affordable APU makes sense.

I really, really hope that this happens. I want to see AMD put out something like a 6c/12t/16cu APU and a 8c16t/24cu APU. I bet they could even engineer it to share the L3 cache and do zany stuff in a tidy package.

It would be a no-brainer for mobile gaming, plus any kind of entertainment center PC.
 
Yeah, I’d bet that APUs are going to be where it’s at in the future. DDR5 bandwidth and updated architectures will improve “bottom line” performance significantly.

I don’t think we’ll get console-scale APUs on the PC for a while yet, though. Maybe expect to see more tiny boxes like Intel’s new gaming NUC with RTX 2060 for the “high end”.
I'm hoping that DDR5+quad channel memory is enough to push APU's into PS5 performance territory. Assuming Intel does get competitive with their onboard graphics, we could see a back and forth between AMD and Intel, pushing for faster performing APU's. I'm betting on that Nvidia is going to release their own ARM based platform for PC's so they too could sell APU's.

I really, really hope that this happens. I want to see AMD put out something like a 6c/12t/16cu APU and a 8c16t/24cu APU. I bet they could even engineer it to share the L3 cache and do zany stuff in a tidy package.

It would be a no-brainer for mobile gaming, plus any kind of entertainment center PC.
I'd be happy with the same hardware in the PS5 but on a ATX motherboard. I wonder if GameStop could pull some strings and make a PC based on that kind of hardware? It would be affordable enough to attract customers to GameStop.

Just remember you also need money to live.
You also need to live to live.
 
I'd be happy with the same hardware in the PS5 but on a ATX motherboard.

I like the idea but there's no way Sony's going to share their IP with anyone. That being said, I believe that Microsoft did develop the Xbox Series chips for server racks and consoles alike; it would be interesting if someone like GameStop turned it into a PC in a Box. Xbox Series P and Xbox Series ... C?
 
I like the idea but there's no way Sony's going to share their IP with anyone. That being said, I believe that Microsoft did develop the Xbox Series chips for server racks and consoles alike; it would be interesting if someone like GameStop turned it into a PC in a Box. Xbox Series P and Xbox Series ... C?
China has different feelings about this. Though this is based on the Xbox One hardware, which is the same as the PS4 but with DDR3 memory. I'd take an Xbox Series X on a motherboard, so long as that memory setup that Microsoft has isn't going to break anything.

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I think they could do well if they focus on large sellers. Like only stock 5600 and 5900 CPUs with 2 or 3 motherboards but they have to be good options not cheap bs. B550 and X570 only, things that are well reviewed and popular. Same with Intel and GPUs, PSUs and memory.

Have a build option for 99.99 or something and offer extended warranties on the backend.

Get rid of their toy section and only stock games PC stuff. Have two or three case options and work a deal with Fractal or Corsair for inventory.

They need to do something because they are going to get killed, not that they ready weren’t. There is room there I think because in my area there’s only 1 store that offers PC parts and that’s Best Buy which is 40 minutes away. There are at least 5 GameStops heading that way. One within 10 minutes of here.

Walmart, Target, etc don’t offer actual PC parts they offer peripherals. At least not in my area.
 
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