GameStop Closing 250 'Unprofitable' Stores

The problem is they stopped selling used PC games...and steam is blowing them away with sales of old games cheaper than you can buy in their stores.

Hate to say it but their business model is too risky...they are all in high rent locations for the sales volume they do. They would do better to incorporate with or become a sub section inside a large chain store, like walmart/target, or band together with geek squad, in order to stay profitable.

Of course, someone from geek squad/walmart/target will read my post and create this business model by themselves, so I just nailed the coffin for gamestop. Oh well...
 
Quix said:
Forgot to mention this in my first post but EVERY game company is going to adopt a Steam-like DRM scheme. Used games are going away, but that doesn't mean price competition is going away. I expect we'll see older games get progressively cheaper like they do on Steam. I mean, they've already paid for development so any sales on old products are gravy.
Click to expand...

I've got no problem with "Steam-Like" DRM. It's not forcing me online to play my game and I can't always be online when I play my games.
 
GameStop was cool back in the 90s when they was software etc and didn't do all the. crap the d now.

all the software etc that turned into game stops. closed by the time the 90s ended and joins of them are in malls anymore here
 
Can't view the article at work but I have to wonder how many of these stores have another GS nearby?

As GameStop ate up the smaller competitors in some areas they ended up with multiple stores in close proximity. As of a couple years ago a nearby mall had two gamestops inside it and there are at least two others within a mile of the mall.
 
We have 2 game stops in my town. One on the either side of Walmart. But because of the red light in front of Walmart you have to drive right in front of one to get to the other one. I its pretty funny.
 
Not a surprise. There are like half a dozen GameStops in a 5 mile radius from where I live, and it isn't all that big a town. Is there really a need for that many?
 
I personally don't have a problem with GameStop (at least buying low, selling high) or the employees at the store by my house. They generally seem nice enough.

The thing that just bugs the hell out of me is the GS pre-order policy... I swear I can't take a breath in a store with out being asked/bothered about pre-orders. I know its not their fault, they have quota's and probably a manager breathing down their neck, so I try and not take that seriously.

Stuff like that just bugs me though. I get pissed if employees ask if I need help in EVERY isle... it's just is annoying. Then when I actually would like help, there is never anyone around:).

As a consumer its a fine line between offering help and annoying , I know this is their minimum wage/high school job but I just can't help but get annoyed and pissy when that line is crossed.
 
BBA said:
The problem is they stopped selling used PC games...and steam is blowing them away with sales of old games cheaper than you can buy in their stores.
Click to expand...
I see this argument all the time but it makes no sense. For one thing, "big box" PC games form a niche market compared to console games, so not dealing in them was never and will never put Gamestop out of business (for evidence, see all the years that Gamestop has thrived without selling used PC games).

For another, if you want to blame someone for Gamestop not selling used PC games, blame the developers and publishers (or the pirates if you want to look at the real basis for the problem). Once single-use/single-user activation codes became common, there was no more market for used PC games. Even if not every game used such codes, anyone trying to sell (or buy) used games would have to keep track of the ones that did and not deal with those.

If the same thing happens to console games, I guess the haters can be happy that this will end up killing the rest of Gamestop's B&M operation.
 
r3awak3n said:
because they sell you a new game for $60, buy it back from you for $20, sell it back to you for $55.

I understand they have to sell games for more money than say amazon but I think they could have much better prices.
Click to expand...

Not really. The prices for credit is pretty consistent with the market. Walmart and Amazon game divisions make up like 5 percent of total game sales. Walmart is happy to offer 60 dollar games on sale day 1 in order to get people into the store to buy other things.

I can't remember the last time I paid full price for a game. Usually Walmart/Amazon has a 20 dollar off promotion thing or something.

I think the average is around 30 dollars ish on store credit for a new game. With the turn over rates of games (ie a new call of duty every year etc) I would say you have to build in 10-15 dollar loss off MSRP in the first couple of weeks.
 
/\ this is true and I am sure game developers want to kill used game sales so that they can make more money. I also think gamestop makes more money of used games than new. Considering they will buy a new game of you for a 3rd of the new price and sell it to someone else for 5 bucks less than new.
 
Babbster said:
I see this argument all the time but it makes no sense. For one thing, "big box" PC games form a niche market compared to console games, so not dealing in them was never and will never put Gamestop out of business (for evidence, see all the years that Gamestop has thrived without selling used PC games).

For another, if you want to blame someone for Gamestop not selling used PC games, blame the developers and publishers (or the pirates if you want to look at the real basis for the problem). Once single-use/single-user activation codes became common, there was no more market for used PC games. Even if not every game used such codes, anyone trying to sell (or buy) used games would have to keep track of the ones that did and not deal with those.

If the same thing happens to console games, I guess the haters can be happy that this will end up killing the rest of Gamestop's B&M operation.
Click to expand...

FOR THE MOTHERFUCKING WIN! The used PC gaming market was completely killed by piracy
 
r3awak3n said:
/\ this is true and I am sure game developers want to kill used game sales so that they can make more money. I also think gamestop makes more money of used games than new. Considering they will buy a new game of you for a 3rd of the new price and sell it to someone else for 5 bucks less than new.
Click to expand...
People get all over Gamestop for this practice but they wouldn't have as much incentive to do so if there was a more reasonable sharing of profits with retailers on new games. As it is, new games (at least console titles) have some of the lowest markups of anything a store might sell. In case you (the generic "you") never thought about it before, this is why you don't see many sales on new games (meaning any game bought directly from the wholesaler, not necessarily chronologically new). Places like Amazon offer pseudodiscounts where you pay full price but get credit to buy something else, but they do so in the hope that you'll spend that credit on something that is not a new game, something that has a better profit margin for them.

The game developers and publishers would actually be in some trouble if Gamestop went under because Gamestop does a lot of advertising for their products. They do it because their used game business incentivizes them to stoke interest in new games (evidence: Gamestop often offers more trade-in value for games if the trade-in is applied to buying new games). Because of the used game side of the business, they do want people to buy new games so that there are more copies in circulation, which also explains why you're not going to get more than $5-10 off the new price when buying used.

Honestly, the Gamestop haters are way too simplistic in the way they look at the business model. I am too for my own purposes, but but my view is much more charitable: I like the idea that I can buy a game for $60, get a lot of fun out of it (usually a lot more than $60 worth because I'm fairly picky about what I buy at full price), and then get something back for it when I'm done, without becoming a retailer myself.
 
Step 1: Figure out how much money you "lose" on used game sales on an average per copy sold basis
Step 2: Implement no-used game protection on all consoles
Step 3: Reduce price of all games by the money lost amount in step 1
Step 4: Pocket additional sales from increased sales at lower price.
 
Babbster said:
People get all over Gamestop for this practice but they wouldn't have as much incentive to do so if there was a more reasonable sharing of profits with retailers on new games. As it is, new games (at least console titles) have some of the lowest markups of anything a store might sell. In case you (the generic "you") never thought about it before, this is why you don't see many sales on new games (meaning any game bought directly from the wholesaler, not necessarily chronologically new). Places like Amazon offer pseudodiscounts where you pay full price but get credit to buy something else, but they do so in the hope that you'll spend that credit on something that is not a new game, something that has a better profit margin for them.

The game developers and publishers would actually be in some trouble if Gamestop went under because Gamestop does a lot of advertising for their products. They do it because their used game business incentivizes them to stoke interest in new games (evidence: Gamestop often offers more trade-in value for games if the trade-in is applied to buying new games). Because of the used game side of the business, they do want people to buy new games so that there are more copies in circulation, which also explains why you're not going to get more than $5-10 off the new price when buying used.

Honestly, the Gamestop haters are way too simplistic in the way they look at the business model. I am too for my own purposes, but but my view is much more charitable: I like the idea that I can buy a game for $60, get a lot of fun out of it (usually a lot more than $60 worth because I'm fairly picky about what I buy at full price), and then get something back for it when I'm done, without becoming a retailer myself.
Click to expand...

Can we be friends?
 
This also might be the sign that Gamestop is budgeting to prepare for the new console onslaught and the no-used games policy that is being enforced.
Everything is going digital download today.
Face it, printing physical multimedia is archaic.
 
maverikv said:
Step 1: Figure out how much money you "lose" on used game sales on an average per copy sold basis
Step 2: Implement no-used game protection on all consoles
Step 3: Reduce price of all games by the money lost amount in step 1
Step 4: Pocket additional sales from increased sales at lower price.
Click to expand...

Won't happen. Games will not decrease in price. I bet you would find just as many studies out there that state used game sales improve new game sales.
 
roaf85 said:
Won't happen. Games will not decrease in price. I bet you would find just as many studies out there that state used game sales improve new game sales.
Click to expand...

Dropping the price is the only way I can see used game restrictions flying.
 
PSYKOMANTIS said:
This also might be the sign that Gamestop is budgeting to prepare for the new console onslaught and the no-used games policy that is being enforced.
Everything is going digital download today.
Face it, printing physical multimedia is archaic.
Click to expand...

Printing is cheap. You print in runs. This manufacturing run, then maybe one 6 months down the road if demand outweighs supply.

Digital distribution pretty much means you have to keep servers up at all times and that my friend still costs money.

Some publishers like Ubisoft are in the business of making games and if they don't want to offer digital distribution on their own they have to pay someone like Valve with steam to host it.
 
Babbster said:
People get all over Gamestop for this practice but they wouldn't have as much incentive to do so if there was a more reasonable sharing of profits with retailers on new games. As it is, new games (at least console titles) have some of the lowest markups of anything a store might sell. In case you (the generic "you") never thought about it before, this is why you don't see many sales on new games (meaning any game bought directly from the wholesaler, not necessarily chronologically new). Places like Amazon offer pseudodiscounts where you pay full price but get credit to buy something else, but they do so in the hope that you'll spend that credit on something that is not a new game, something that has a better profit margin for them.

The game developers and publishers would actually be in some trouble if Gamestop went under because Gamestop does a lot of advertising for their products. They do it because their used game business incentivizes them to stoke interest in new games (evidence: Gamestop often offers more trade-in value for games if the trade-in is applied to buying new games). Because of the used game side of the business, they do want people to buy new games so that there are more copies in circulation, which also explains why you're not going to get more than $5-10 off the new price when buying used.

Honestly, the Gamestop haters are way too simplistic in the way they look at the business model. I am too for my own purposes, but but my view is much more charitable: I like the idea that I can buy a game for $60, get a lot of fun out of it (usually a lot more than $60 worth because I'm fairly picky about what I buy at full price), and then get something back for it when I'm done, without becoming a retailer myself.
Click to expand...

they want you to buy used games? No way. Everytime I buy from game stop they ask, are you sure you dont want to save $5 and get it used. Why is that, because they make a much bigger profit on a used game.
 
as a former employee and friend of quite a few former and currents

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
TROLLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

they had it coming... they treat both employee and customer like crap and while i have nothing against used games, i've found a much healthier used game market via gamefly (reasonable pricing), amazon, and just watching ebay and craigslist.
 
Manaknight said:
as a former employee and friend of quite a few former and currents

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
TROLLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

they had it coming... they treat both employee and customer like crap and while i have nothing against used games, i've found a much healthier used game market via gamefly (reasonable pricing), amazon, and just watching ebay and craigslist.
Click to expand...

They treat their employees like crap because they are hiring dumbasses in the first place. The average pay of an associates is so close to min. wage and the managers aren't much different.

Selling video games isn't a hard business. Most people know what they want to buy when they go in there.
 
roaf85 said:
Printing is cheap. You print in runs. This manufacturing run, then maybe one 6 months down the road if demand outweighs supply.

Digital distribution pretty much means you have to keep servers up at all times and that my friend still costs money.

Some publishers like Ubisoft are in the business of making games and if they don't want to offer digital distribution on their own they have to pay someone like Valve with steam to host it.
Click to expand...
Another factor to consider is the inevitable huge rush on a new game when it's first released.

One has only to look at Netflix, an organization that currently digitally distributes a ton of content constantly, to see the potential problems. Netflix often has trouble maintaining streams at the highest quality during high-traffic times despite having plenty of data to determine when those times will be. This is because they have to balance their server loads over all times, not just the times when traffic peaks. To be a little clearer, you're not going to be able to set your system up to handle (picking random numbers) 10 TB/second on Sunday nights without setting it up to handle 10 TB/second every other night, even if during the other 6 nights the demand drops to 2 TB/second.

With games, there is the advantage that a given game doesn't have to be downloaded multiple times, but even so the day that a digital download of Halo 5 is released for the next Xbox Microsoft will need monstrous amounts of bandwidth available to meet the demand; and if it's a game designed for Blu-ray type storage you're talking up to 20-40 GB per copy.

Also, as was noted in a story here recently, trucks and airplanes can actually move more data faster from one place to another than the Internet. Consider driving to Gamestop to pick up a game: For me, even riding the bus, I can get to Gamestop, buy a game, and get back home within about 90-120 minutes. My Internet connection runs at about 10 Mbps. So, I can move a Blu-ray's worth of data faster by bus than I can by downloading even if I achieve my peak speed for the entire duration of the download, and the publisher didn't have to make that bandwidth available to me (by buying a specific fraction of a server and the bandwidth itself from an ISP). If I buy two Blu-ray games, I've just doubled my "bus bandwidth," plus I can treat myself to Mrs. Fields. ;)

Steam solves this problem to some extent by pre-loading but, in my experience, not only does this often fail (especially when there's a release-day update) but it requires an advance purchase/promise to purchase on day one, and more often than not I wait until I read about how good the game is before I buy.

It's too late to make this story short, but I'll sum up: Optical discs, at least for game consoles, aren't going away in the next generation and, depending on how much storage future games need (and how fast Internet connections get), maybe not in the one after that, either.
 
roaf85 said:
They treat their employees like crap because they are hiring dumbasses in the first place. The average pay of an associates is so close to min. wage and the managers aren't much different.

Selling video games isn't a hard business. Most people know what they want to buy when they go in there.
Click to expand...

I don't see why a job being easy means you have to treat your employees like crap
 
r3awak3n said:
they want you to buy used games? No way. Everytime I buy from game stop they ask, are you sure you dont want to save $5 and get it used. Why is that, because they make a much bigger profit on a used game.
Click to expand...

Said every used business ever. Same with car dealerships/book stores etc.

I don't see why people are so pissed off about a used game being only 5 dollars cheaper.

If people don't like the price don't pay for it.
 
r3awak3n said:
they want you to buy used games? No way. Everytime I buy from game stop they ask, are you sure you dont want to save $5 and get it used. Why is that, because they make a much bigger profit on a used game.
Click to expand...
They want enough people to buy new games that a) they don't lose out on stocking them and b) there are enough new games in circulation to satisfy their need for used games.

You're right that, on average, they'd rather sell a used game than a new one but, again, it's not as simple as you're making it out to be.
 
Given up trading in stuff, I know I'm going to get ripped off when they resell the game for almost full price, and gave me $3 for it.
 
LeninGHOLA said:
When they pulled the PC game shelf, I never went back.
Click to expand...

It was a fucking nightmare to manage that. You wouldn't believe how many overrides I did because people came in bought a PC game, went home their computer couldn't play it, they would bring it back demanding a refund (sorry only exchanges or store credit on opened items) then I would have to override the system because some parent was fucking yelling at me all for 6.50 an hour.
 
roaf85 said:
It was a fucking nightmare to manage that. You wouldn't believe how many overrides I did because people came in bought a PC game, went home their computer couldn't play it, they would bring it back demanding a refund (sorry only exchanges or store credit on opened items) then I would have to override the system because some parent was fucking yelling at me all for 6.50 an hour.
Click to expand...

No doubt, but I just didn't have a reason to go back after that point. I never returned a game, mostly because I can read min specs and know how to run an installer exe :p

I gave my local store some credit, many of the PC games they had were actually pretty good.
 
LeninGHOLA said:
No doubt, but I just didn't have a reason to go back after that point. I never returned a game, mostly because I can read min specs and know how to run an installer exe :p

I gave my local store some credit, many of the PC games they had were actually pretty good.
Click to expand...

Man I had depressing people come into my store that were PC gamers. The most annoying people were the morons who would come in being like "HALO IS THE BEST FPS EVAR!!!" and this was the time were I was still playing UT2004 and GoldenEye was only like 5-6 years old, or still something talked about during those old days conversations.

I will never forget the day some guy preordered EQ2 special edition. I didn't even know they were making another EQ and it was the only like 100 dollar special edition. We had it on the top shelf for like 2 days as if it was a 30 year bottle of scotch and we would always make fun of it.

This guy came in to get it and I like oh shit you preordered this (I was technically suppose to not display it) and I remember every word he said and the look on his face to this day:

Me: Oh this collectors edition looks pretty cool I just have an issue with MMOs or paying 15 a month
Him: You should get it man it is really cool, I was addicted to cocaine and this game for 8 years and just last year my wife left me, but its all cool I just play everquest now, well see you around man.

Me: (as he raced out the door) What the fuck just happened....
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top