GameStop Closing 200 Stores Following Another Quarter of Dismal Sales (polygon.com) 49
GameStop will close as many 200 stores before the end of 2019 following another quarter of sharply declining sales and a $32 million loss, the company stated. From a report: In a statement yesterday, the company's chief financial officer attributed the drop in sales to trends "consistent with what we have historically observed towards the end of a hardware cycle." That said, it's yet another quarter with a double-digit decline, down 14.3 percent over the same one last year. For the quarter ending March 2019, GameStop reported a 13.3 sales decline and the company's stock price plunged 40 percent in one day, recovering only slightly since then. James Bell, GameStop's chief financial officer, told investors that the closures will affect between 180 and 200 "underperforming" stores between now and the end of 2019. The company's most recent annual report listed 5,830 locations worldwide, with more than 4,000 of them in the United States and Canada. In yesterday's earnings call, Bell said that the vast majority -- 95 percent -- of stores were profitable. But more closures, in larger numbers than today's news, are expected over the next one to two years, he added.
Physical media is dead (Score:5, Insightful)
Physical media is dead and game companies got what they wanted. You can't resell a a digital download after you play it. So it doesn't surprise me that Game Stop is losing business. Most of their game sales came from used games.
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Speak for yourself. I prefer the physical disk/cartridge over downloading/streaming everything.
Same on selling it used, you can't do that with a download.
Over-saturation is another big problem.
I livein the metro Detroit area and I can think of 2 separate intersections with GameStops across the street from each other, less than 1/4 mile apart. Near Macomb Mall at Masonic and Gratiot, and then near Lakeside Mall at Hall Rd and Schoenerr. None of those are even in the mall.
Oh,m make that three sets, In tro
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I prefer downloads.(I would say phisical, but all a phisical does is download and repalce the entire game these days, so no benefit there).
However I will always buy the cheapest.
I am not in a rush to play 99% of things, and physical media bottoms out at a lower point than digital sales ever go to.
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Yep, gotta shop around for the best deal.
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The point being, the console manufacturers will soon stop physical media altogether, issuing game consoles that don't even have drives, and the PC side of things will go the same direction.
From that point on, it'll be download or nothing, you pay the price they dictate and you pay it directly to them, and you'll not be buying the game - you'll be paying to rent it for as long as they decide you should be able to.
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Speak for yourself. I prefer the physical disk/cartridge over downloading/streaming everything.
Downloadable media is like the borg - resistance is futile. Android and iOS have never used physical media for software purchases. Some streaming TV series never get a release on physical media. Microsoft sells an Xbox with no disc drive [xbox.com].
I agree 100% that the reasons they've been pushing this are all the obvious ones: Squeeze out the profits that the retail stores were taking, preventing sales of used media, and vendor lock-in. Sometimes, you also get the added bonus that the DRM server goes down or yo
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Millenial generation is only ever playing the currently fashionable games anyway. That leads towards a natural desire for a rental or subscription service. I don't like this, but I can see it as a valid market. I just wish it didn't look like that was set to become the only market available.
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Games are pretty shite at this time. Full of advertising, force upgrades that make a game worse (fuck you very much steam), pay to win, gambling boxes and grind you need to pay to escape. Been over a year maybe and been cutting back for years before that. Most publishers turned out to be a lying pack of psycho dick heads and have turned gaming into shite with delusions of infinite greed.
Some of the independent stuff has not been bad but I have a whole gaming library with some still unplayed games and well,
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Some of my favorite games and game series came from resales. It's a shame that the game industry has to be so actively hostile to what is a legal and fair use practice. I am still playing some games off of physical media even though the original publishers are sometimes out of business.
On the other hand, GOG is a very nice model and lets you make a full legal backup of the game on whatever media you choose unlike the DRM peddlers. I am dismayed to see the mainstream gaming publishers trying to steer towa
Re: Physical media is dead (Score:1)
I buy games on GoG without a second thought, if I think I might have one day want to play them. GoG packaged classics are a good option. I bought Morrowind GOTY from GoG and don't need to screw with no-cd mods. I bought Warcraft 1 and 2 from GoG. The Orcs and Humans installs a clean stand alone DOSBox package.
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It's not the game industry is actively hostile, it's the consumers simply preferring downloads over a disc. No more midnight lineups in the cold. No more heading to the store and lining up to buy a limited copy. With pre-down
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Re:Physical media is dead (Score:4)
So maybe game companies got what they want, but I got what I wanted, too. And while a lot of my friends are collectors, and I don't begrudge them that, I have an extra wall in my living room that isn't taken up by several bookcases worth of games. I don't mind the trade-offs of digital distribution, though I sympathize with people who still prefer physical.
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Any physical media that I've bought in the last 10 years has impulse purchases. Finding Farm Simulator in a bin at Walmart for 2 buck or something. I've not had a physical cd/dvd drive, permanent, in my systems for that last 2 builds ether.
What I don't do is pay full price for a game. I have yet to see any game that I must have enough to pay $60 or $70 for. I'll wait a few months till the price drops to something reasonable. By then the reviews are in as are patches and bug fixes, and cheats. I'll a
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There are still a lot of thing that Game Stop can do besides selling physical media. Controllers, Hardware, Books, and even Game Stop only content.
They could have also used their Brick and Mortar ability to be an advertising hub for the game companies. Have people come in being able to play the latest games, see if they are worth buying or not. Games are more fun when you play with someone else who is physically there, and help make it more enjoyable. So people will buy a copy (perhaps with game stop or
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They seem to have stopped supporting PC games awhile back and are a console only outlet, so last time I visited there was nothing I thought worth a second glance.
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Have people come in being able to play the latest games, see if they are worth buying or not.
That's the absolute last thing game publishers want! They want pre-orderers, not waiters-and-seers.
They want to already have your money, before the first embargo-breaking YouTuber says it's not as good as the marketing hype and tightly controlled E3 demos led them to believe.
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Physical media is dead
It is not. In fact, retro consoles that take carts, and carts for same, continue to gain value over time. If you see a top-loading NES or SNES at a yard sale, especially with the original controllers, snap that fucker up. They are downright profitable. So are any rare games for basically any console.
So it doesn't surprise me that Game Stop is losing business. Most of their game sales came from used games.
GameStop shut down their support for non-disc consoles a while back in order to save space. Guess what? The only reason I or anyone I knew went in there in the first place was for carts. And we'd sometimes buy d
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It is not. In fact, retro consoles that take carts, and carts for same, continue to gain value over time. If you see a top-loading NES or SNES at a yard sale, especially with the original controllers, snap that fucker up. They are downright profitable. So are any rare games for basically any console.
Oh hell yes. I forgot all about retro consoles. Those things are worth a small mint if you can find them in good condition. I wish so much that I had hung on to my old gaming consoles. I passed them down to my cousin and, well, I'll not bring up the details. No use in both of us crying.
Re: Physical media is dead (Score:2)
Digital sales are killing them, no stopping (Score:3)
It's not hard to see why Gamestop is struggling when more and more people are going with digital sales...
I still like to get discs for some games but even I have switched to downloads for even some very large games. It's hard to see how that trend even starts to reverse at all... there are only so many games with physical exclusive aspects that would make people want to buy from a store like Gamestop.
I wonder if it would help if they opened up combination gamer stores and play centers where you could rent play time with consoles and games they offered... probably the overhead of that would be really draining though.
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I kind of miss the good old days of picking up a new game at the store, heading back home, then sitting on the john while reading through the thick manual. Games these days don't even have manual, and you're lucky if they even have a tutorial to describe the weird gameplay. Sure, there's a nice online Morrowind map, but I still pull out the paper map to have a look.
Remaining Stores (Score:5, Informative)
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Because I was curious, I looked up how many total stores exist and there should be at least 5,600 left after this (surprised me too).
You looked it up did you? Before or after you read the article/ article summary?
"The company's most recent annual report listed 5,830 locations worldwide, with more than 4,000 of them in the United States and Canada...."
Doh (Score:2)
You looked it up did you? Before or after you read the article/ article summary?
"The company's most recent annual report listed 5,830 locations worldwide, with more than 4,000 of them in the United States and Canada...."
Uhm . . . uh . . . before. In my defense, I had the goal of comparing it to Radio Shack (7100 at its peak) and Mcdonald's, which I opened the new tab for anyway.
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Read the summary? Read the summary? READ THE SUMMARY?
THIS IS SLASHDOT!
There's no reading of the summary, let alone the article!
Innovate (Score:5, Insightful)
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Gamestop strikes me as a company similar to Circuit City that was ride-or-die on its original business plan and failed to change with the market. Gamestop's future is entwined with the sales of physical game media and the hope it will always be there and be strong. If the next-gen or next-next-gen Playstation/Xbox/Nintendo move away from physical copies in favor of streaming or downloads, Gamestop is sunk. Now is the time to start changing their stores and offering new concepts to bring customers in for more than a physical disc.
I don't know if they are ride or die and unwilling to change.
Have you been visiting Gamestop over the last decade?
They have changed dramatically. They went through a phase of offering digital downloads in store, to pushing game related merch hard.
They are trying.
Re:Innovate (Score:4, Interesting)
This.
They've shifted eavily into the merch and accessories markets. Toys/figures, T-shirts, etc.
Over the last several years, I've bought only a couple games there; but several amibo, funcopop figures, puzzles, t-shirts, socks, even a purse as gifts for various people.
Around here its becoming a gamer oriented "hot-topic"; that also sells consoles, accessories, and games. And that's not a bad move.
Re:Innovate (Score:5, Interesting)
Several of the Gamestops around me have gone more heavily to the t-shirts, board games, puzzles, figures, and Funco Pops etc Video-game related merchandise lately
Re:Innovate (Score:4, Insightful)
I see Gamestop more like Radioshack. Who change their business models around, however often in ways that sacrificed its core values.
RadioShack end when they went into Cell Phones and Cell Phone Accessories, filling up 2/3 of their retail space, while they were hundreds of stores that sold this stuff, even in rural areas, you can run into a place that sold Cell Phone stuff every square mile. During this time, the "Maker Movement" was on the rise. RadioShack could had been a local place for 3d printing and 3d printing supplies, a place where you can actually pickup electronics for raspberry pi's and tools and training to fix electronics and legacy hardware.
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Total fad fad following MBA bullshit. These cockbags don't have an original idea in their heads.
The guy who wrecked JCPenny wanted to class it up which in his mind somehow meant making it a department store with the appeal of an apple store.
The core shopper at JCPenny has always been the unsuccessful bargain shoppers. Buying a bunch of shit they don't need because it's 30% off. He felt like apple would never do that, he got rid of the fake sales because they're trashy. The MBA crowd says it's not his f
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That's what Radio Shack was back in the 70's and 80's, and instead of being at the front and following that same path the leadership decided to piss it away on trends, which killed the company.
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To my horror, I discovered one day in 2019 that "anonymous" posting has been disabled on Slashdot. Registering an account involves a massive form of information, e-mail verification with an annoying forced "password reset", and of course a Google reCANCER blob. In other words, it's no longer possible to comment on articles. It was the last place where I could in any way make my little voice heard to a couple of other people.
Lol now that AC is done and gone I'll let you know that it was as simple as loading the mobile page... obviously there were better ways to circumvent the capcha but it was easy.
* A couple of years ago, I needed a basic website for my software project. Not just every single server host, but even "webhost" (called "web hotel" in some languages) demanded that I sent a scanned copy of my (nonexistent) government-issued photo ID and Visa debit card for the privilege of getting to pay them money. None of them of course mention this prior to wasting my time and energy filling out their endless forms... .
LOL! The amount of work it takes to keep your data to yourself these days is just fucking nuts.
I have a few different identities complete with digital photo id, phone numbers, and email that work. Fake postal addresses. Background stories, including race, gender, sexual preference, income, and profession. My "boring" profile is
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I've stopped using freenode because IRC was always like a 2nd or 3rd choice for getting help. No way I'm going through all their crazy registration hoops just to find out that the relevant channel is completely idle.
I blame freenode for the death of IRC actually, doing everything it could to be the IRC hub of open source discussion and then locking it down until nobody new felt like joining.
2008 called... (Score:2)
"Ring. Ring. Hello? Hi Internet, this is retail gaming sales. You win."
I'll give $5 for a used store in that condition (Score:4, Funny)
Or I can offer you $10 in store credit.
Time to Level UP (Score:1)
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The pay to walk around a games "arcade" would be a good idea.
Every game is free, but the cost to enter is per day? ie LAN party price per day ticket?
Connect a few games with displays and set out an in store LAN.
Add in snacks, coffee, fast internet. A chair like in a cinema? Bench seating? To pack in people but give them their own display space?
Gone are the days of 50 ms games all over the USA.
How many staff in a non $15 state could get a wage out of how many people playing compu
Just one of many explosions (Score:2)
Just one of many during the Retail Apocalypse. Even if physical media were still popular, people would be ordering them online.
only 200? (Score:1)
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Out of stock (Score:1)
The same geniuses that took over thinkgeek? (Score:3)
Something scummy about this business model (Score:2)
You have new games selling for say $60 and these scumbag stores will sell a used copy for maybe $40 or more for a somewhat hit game. Yet, if you fish around you will generally find some store probably selling it for $50 or even less than $40 with some coupon. This all sort of sucks until you find out they probably bought the game off some kid for $9.
The best advice I heard a while back was if
Over priced with a crappy selction (Score:2)
We take my kid to a small chain that has ten times the titles per console plus a ton of used and new consoles. The prices are thirty percent less than gamestop for used games and often less for the new selections. We drive by two gamestops to get to it and never hesitate.