Reuters is reporting today that North American video game retailer GameStop is currently in talks with a number of buyout firms. The new organisation reports that GameStop is in the midst of holding talks with private equity firms about a potential transaction after receiving buyout interest. The company has suffered terribly due to changing consumer habits for video games, with many people purchasing games digitally and new services like Xbox Games Pass hasn’t helped matters for the company.
The retailer’s stock has slid more than 32 percent over the last 12 months, bringing its market capitalization to $1.42 billion, down from about $9.4 billion in 2007.
I’m honestly surprised. I frequent GameStop and have the Elite membership, and prefer to buy games physically. I also buy my eShop cards from there.
Of course, I’m most likely in the minority. But still. It’s not a small minority, at least I think it isn’t.
same, been a gamestop member and Game informer subscriber since the magazine was held together by staples. I love Gamestop, and really still use it for any preorders or gaming needs.
I can understand times are changing in the way people buy, but i personally shop with the intention of buying physical every time.
Due to scheduling constraints I’ve started preordering from Amazon, but otherwise I almost exclusively buy from GS. And GameInformer is awesome!
Same here. Always buy physical copies and eshop cards from them
I do buy physical, but not at Gamestop. They got 20-40% more expensive games compared to about every other retailer. And the people working there are so clueless at their job. One mother there asked for a “Disney Game with swords and Japanese cartoon characters”, and the GS employer there couldn’t seriously figure it out.
That’s unfortunate, because the GameStop employees I’ve interacted with almost always know what I’m talking about. Heck, I used to be really hood friends with one. She got another store to send my store a pair of yellow Joy-Con. She was amazing. :)
Hood friends, yo! Sounds like a cool thing dude xP
😂 My bad, that was a typo. But yeah, we were great friends, and she was even a voice of reason sometimes convincing me I didn’t need to save my money when I couldn’t decide what I wanted.
*did need to save my money
Haha, yeah, didn’t sound like much reason xP
I prefer to order digital. My switch is portable and I would much rather have my games on the console. I hate worrying about losing those tiny cartridges. It’s also much less wasteful. BOTW is the only physical game I own, and I wish it was digital. Digital games have faster loading times. On the rare occasion that I buy a physical game I Preorder it on Amazon Prime and get a 20% discount for doing so. The game is guaranteed to be delivered on the release date. The writing is on the wall for GameStop.
I haven’t checked the numbers, but are games that much faster on intern memory/microSD compared to the Switch cartridges? I know Blu Ray disc usually loads slower than HDD on those kind of consoles.
Its usually a few seconds faster on Internal/SD card storage, but its barely noticeable tbh. Reason why Blu-ray loads slower is bc the RPM isnt as fast as a HDD RPM speed. Disc drives can only go so fast.
I know the reason, trust me. Physical PC games comes with empty covers and just a download code mostly nowadays. With good reason. Had to install Total War Warhammer 2 with PC-Roms… 6 discs… took forever xD
i’m not surprised. i’m 35 and our local gamestop has been providing crappy service for the last 20 years but they bought all the competition so there was nowhere else to go. now that there are quicker and cheaper options who would shop there?
I don’t mind gamestop. Their rewards programs aren’t all that bad when you look into them. It’s just… they are so dang pushy. Just give me some space when I go in there. Don’t make me feel like you’re a salesman. Just be a fellow gamer.
As a former GS shift manager, sorry. It’s not us. Per corporate, every customer needs to be greeted, informed of current sales, be informed that they can trade games in just in case they don’t know this, asked if they want to preorder anything, asked if they want a Pro membership, asked if they want any game protection plans, and sometimes more depending on if anything is happening at the time.
It’s more than silly. Rather than setting up a community, like a comic/magic store might, they run the thing like telemarketers.
Good riddance? I can’t say I have overall positive stories about GameStop. But first Toys R Us and now this? RIP.
Blockbuster was before Toys R Us
Funcoland was before Blockbuster
They’re known for movie rentals, not video game sales.
And that would be much different competition as it was Netflix that killed them. These gaming brick and mortar are losing to online retail and digital games.
Buying physical just isn’t worth the western censorship. Plus with a portable like the Switch its more convenient to have everything preloaded on. Also, if you live in a PAL territory thats nowhere Europe theres benefits to importing online multiplayer games that split players based on their copy.
“Buying physical just isn’t worth the western censorship.”
I’ve been buying physical western games since 1990. I can count on one hand the number of games I’ve bought who’s censorship effected anything that matters.
That said, I did buy the Super Famicom version of Super Ghouls n’ Ghosts because it’s just plain weird for the coffins to have Ankhs rather than Crosses on them.
I completely agree with the statements in the post. Digital has been more and more appeasing for me. I use to always want a physical copy but in this day and age of convenience the only reason i buy physical anymore is for Collectors Edition. Its easier to select and load a game that is already there on the hard drive and the day where games had a value is slowly dwindling on new consoles because a game that was rare to find before is always in a digital form now. Ive actually converted over half my games already from a physical form by trading in to gamestop for like $10 and used that $10 to get the digital version when they are on sale online.
I can completely understand all of these points, but part of the reason I haven’t gone full digital is a big one: SD card space. That can be a hassle to juggle. Also, is it really that much of a hassle to simply open the cartridge slot and pop in a new one? Although I can understand the convenience behind it (I opted to get Kirby Star Allies and Mario Tennis Aces digitally because of low SD space and My Nintendo points), there’s something special about actually putting a game into the console. I guess that’s just me. To each their own! 😃
I think that physical and digital can coexist very well. I have a nice balance of physical and digital releases. But the appeal of actually going somewhere to buy a game never grows old for me.
“The company has suffered terribly due to changing consumer habits for video games, with many people purchasing games digitally and new services like Xbox Games Pass hasn’t helped matters for the company.”
I really doubt this matters as much as Amazon preordering rendering them obsolete.
If they sell GameStop to someone, I hope it’s someone that will actually care about fixing up the company & it’s stores. I’ve grown attached to my nearest GameStop.
I had read that GS was in talks with Wizards of the Coast to host Magic the Gathering events at their stores. I don’t suppose Hasbro (owner of WotC) wants a video game retail chain?
This is exactly why I have an attitude towards digital games, and people that support digital. It hurts video game stores, and it will eventually cause them all to close forever if it keeps up. I can’t imagine the day that there’s no game stores anywhere, or game sections in stores like Wal-Mart and Target. When K-Mart no longer carried video games, it sucked more than it already did. Although I didn’t buy a game from K-Mart for probably 20 years or more. Not since Wal-Mart came around. And Gamestop started sucking a bit more when they stopped selling retro games (in store). But I still go there for Wii games, and sometimes PS4 games.
I mostly go to the new EntertainMart that opened in my area. But I predict they won’t stay in business for too long, since SO many of their games etc. are over-priced. They had a used Breath Of The Wild “Link on horse” amiibo (also a used Robin amiibo) for $30.00. RIPOFF! And some of their NES and Super NES games under glass is $100-$200. INSANE!! And I have some of those same games. I HATE when stores sell things at eBay/internet prices. Especially is it’s thrift stores. I NEVER shop at thrift stores that charge eBay/internet prices. People go to thrift stores for rock-bottom bargains. Not to get ripped off.
Bottom line: I really wish people would support physical games more than digital. I don’t want to see video game stores close out forever. And I’m fully prepared to stop “modern” gaming if the day ever comes where ALL games are digital-only. I’ve had a good run. I would just stick with retro games like the Angry Video Game Nerd. Wow, I didn’t plan on writing so much. I can tell I’m bored.
Know what else hurt videogame stores? GameStop. Why do you think they are the only clowns in town? Now they are getting what they deserve
I always buy physical and never buy digital. The problem is many people who prefer buying physical games refuse to shop at Gamestop because of their shady practices. I’ve personally experienced many issues with this retailer myself from Gamestop purposely opening limited quantity manufactured games and price gouging them 10x times it’s original worth (Xenoblade Chronicles wii and Metroid Prime trilogy), employees lying to customers about how much their trade-ins are over the phone to get them to come all the way to their store in hopes they would trade in their games for a lesser amount rather than taking their games back home and keeping them, repackaging used games and selling used games as new at full $60+, don’t get me started on the exclusive gamestop only content and exclusive rights for rare games (once again Xenoblade Chronicles Wii and specific amiibo), and finally we have the the little issue of free Pokemon distribution where Gamestop were just giving anyone entire stacks of Pokemon cards to the first person through the door, thus giving no one else a chance to get them.
I hate Gamestop and I’m glad that retailer will soon be out of business, I buy my games at Best Buy, Target, Walmart, Amazon and other retailers that isn’t Gamestop. Gamestop doesn’t have any good deals anyway, even during black friday their sales are trash!
A couple notes, from an ex GS manager who doesn’t like the company at all (they’re even worse to their employees than they are to their customers)
“I’ve personally experienced many issues with this retailer myself from Gamestop purposely opening limited quantity manufactured games and price gouging them 10x times it’s original worth ”
While I won’t defend GS for cracking and repricing their Xenoblade copies, I don’t think it’s fair to call it “price gouging”. Even at the higher prices GS put them at, they were still well below the going price of the game. If it’s price gouging, this is the first example I’ve ever seen that has the seller still selling below market value. You could argue I suppose that if GS released all the copies at the MSRP of $50 than the market wouldn’t have been so hungry, but having worked there at the time I can say that there just flatly weren’t enough copies around to fill the demand. For non major AAA games, it is very common for stores to get exactly enough copies to cover their preorders, plus 1 more copy. That’s what happened in our store where we got two copies of Xenoblade, and one of them was mine. I was the only one to preorder (in spite of urging customers for months to do so). There’s no way with as popular as that game ended up being that they weren’t going to skyrocket in price.
” employees lying to customers about how much their trade-ins are over the phone to get them to come all the way to their store in hopes they would trade in their games for a lesser amount rather than taking their games back home and keeping them”
GS employees aren’t supposed to give you trade-in values over the phone at all, so this is especially curious. Whatever you saw here, it definitely isn’t company policy.
“repackaging used games and selling used games as new at full $60+”
This depends on what you mean. If you mean they take games in as trade-ins, then repackage a trade in game as new, that doesn’t make any sense. GS makes a lot more money on used games than they do new games. Any individual GS store is under pressure to make profit. If they’re repackaging a used game as new (in addition to ruining their inventory, which will cause them loads of trouble with corporate and loss prevention and all that), even though they’re making more profit, they’re reporting less profit to corporate since used games track higher in value to the company. Why would a local Gamestop go out of its way to make it look bad to corporate? I seriously doubt this ever happens.
Now, if you mean they sell games that have been played to customers as new games, yes. That happens all the time. GS are completely hypocritical in that to Gamestop, a new game that has had its seal cracked by a customer is now used, but a new game that has had its seal cracked by a GS employee still counts as new. Further, so that the employees can always know more about the new games they’re selling, employees are allowed to “check out” games from the store like a library. So, an employee wants to play the new God of War or whatever the new game is, they can open one, check it out from the store, play it, bring it back, and then the shop puts a big clear sticker over the game case where it opens and still sells it as “new”. It’s a completely scumbaggy practice that is actually part of GS’s policies.
So they do sell used games as new, but not in the way you seemed to be describing.
Good, its about time. Besides, their business practice and employees are absolutely horrible, and don’t give me that “oh but my gamestop is nice”. Thats a minority, most people agree that GameStop is trash cause it is. GameStop needs to end… the digital age is here.
Maybe people is becoming richer. I always buy physical hoping to resell some stuff when the new generation comes out. Eventually there is too much prosperity in the first world today and consequently wasted resources.