Kickstarter Tumblr Art Club. Film TV Games. Fortnite Game of Thrones Books. Comics Music. Filed under: Gaming Entertainment. Linkedin Reddit Pocket Flipboard Email. Next Up In Gaming. Sign up for the newsletter Verge Deals Subscribe to get the best Verge-approved tech deals of the week. Just one more thing!
Please confirm your subscription to Verge Deals via the verification email we just sent you. Email required. GameStop sells games on discs. It's their primary business — specifically used games on discs. You can buy gift cards for digital games, but there's no way to buy any of the hundreds of games sold only through digital storefronts like PlayStation Network, Xbox Live, Nintendo's eShop, and Steam.
There is no used market for digital games, because they're just codes. There is no physical disc to sell. And for sure their future will be truncated and eliminated the day that discs stop being manufactured. GameStop's currently in the process of making over its executive team. It's got a new CEO, and it's got a slight extension of life granted by Microsoft and Sony — both companies are making new game consoles that will still run game discs in addition to digital-only games.
In the meantime, the company's vast network of stores will assuredly shrink. The company has already started scaling back on its ThinkGeek push — items have been integrated into existing GameStop stores, and standalone ThinkGeek locations were shuttered.
When stores like Tower Records and Borders were on the way out, it was hard to tell how long they had left. Such is the case with GameStop as well. All the signs are certainly there: Questionable business decisions, the introduction of unrelated sales items, and a business model that's firmly locked in an era that's ended. As the GameStop store associates said to me in each instance where I asked, I would get more money for the two games by selling them online.
It's not a lot, and it's certainly less than the actual value of both games, but it's a lot more than the zero dollars in value both games provide while sitting on a shelf. When I was growing up in the '90s, it was pretty common for used CD stores to exist. They worked exactly like you think: You could trade in your old CDs for money or store credit. The eventuality for used record stores was clear as Napster, then iTunes, then Spotify and others fundamentally altered the way most people interact with music.
Why buy a record when you can access a service with every record? Why buy a physical disc when you can buy it digitally? This the same transformation currently happening to the video game industry, and it's this reality that GameStop is facing down.
For you. These included customer traffic pressures from the COVID pandemic, supply-chain disruptions, and an ongoing shift away from buying physical video game disks and toward digital downloads. But the biggest impact came from gamers shutting their wallets in the period leading up to console launches by Sony and Microsoft. Such generational switchovers routinely pinch GameStop's sales volumes, with the pressure peaking just before the new hardware hits shelves.
We have closed almost stores worldwide since the beginning of , representing both underperforming locations and de-densification in certain trade areas.
We expect these closures to create a more profitable footprint. With additional stores set to close by the end of , GameStop is excited about the potential to shift even more of its business into the online channel over the next few years. That strategy, combined with inventory cuts, should give it a shot at creating sustainable profitability despite the reduction in its footprint. GameStop is just getting started with its efforts to slim down and reorient the business toward its growth opportunities, though.
By all accounts, these consoles are experiencing unprecedented demand, and we continue to work with the suppliers to meet that demand. It was the chain's best monthly performance in almost two years and likely puts the company on track to post overall sales growth and positive operating margins for its fiscal Q4, which runs from November through January. The retailer is working hard to capitalize on this surge and continue it into However, its wider plans still reflect a business that needs to transform itself in order to compete in an environment where video games are mostly purchased and delivered online.
The good news is that GameStop still has a role to play in connecting video game developers and hardware producers to their customers through software and console sales. Now comes the hard part -- constructing a profitable business around that role. Discounted offers are only available to new members.
0コメント