During its earnings report for the final fiscal quarter of 2016, retail chain GameStop announced declining sales in games and hardware, and that it could potentially close at least 150 of its 7,500 stores, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The company noted that that its total global sales declined 13.6 percent during the 2016 holiday season, because of “weak sales of certain AAA titles and aggressive console promotions by other retailers”. The chain announced that it “anticipates that it will close between two percent to three percent of its global store footprint” in 2017.
GameStop CEO Paul Raines pointed to digital sales as a reason for why video game and console sales have begun to slow for the company. New hardware sales fell 29.1 percent, while software sales fell by 19.3 percent. Despite those losses, Raines noted that “new hardware innovation in the video game category looks promising,” with consoles such as the Nintendo Switch selling out quickly. Nintendo plans to double their production this year due to high demand.
Despite the those losses, there were some bright points, and GameStop appears to be pivoting to adjust. The company saw its sales rise by 27.8 percent when it came to collectibles, particularly with Pokémon-related toys and apparel. According to Raines, GameStop’s “non-gaming businesses drove gross margin expansion and significantly contributed to our profits,” a trend that he anticipated would continue in the coming year. To that end, GameStop will be opening “approximately 35 new Collectibles stores globally, and approximately 65 new Technology Brand stores.”
Could at least post a source, preferably archived.
On the one hand, I like to see Gamestop suffering. Especially after the damage they've done both to local independent used game stores which they've choked out in my town, and in some cases, personally fucked the aftermarket up by making complete games harder and more expensive to find. On the other, I do hope this isn't going to be indicative of a push against physical as a format in the future. Already enough companies that are too leery of doing physical releases for particular games in favor of cutting the entire disc/cart/case production out in favor of digital only.
Fat chance, given that quip about “non-gaming businesses drove gross margin expansion and significantly contributed to our profits". I'm still disgusted how Gamestop, at least the ones around where I live, used the space cleared up by trashing their DS cases and manuals for stocking phone shit.
Nathaniel Perry
As a former employee who worked there in his teens, you have no idea how pleased I am by this. This is the price you pay for abandoning PC users.
Carter Sanders
oh sorry, here: archive.is/Jmos6 please use archive.is2017/3/25/15059380/gamestop-store-closings-2017-digital-sales-collectibles-business
i think the funniest part of the article is like they think that they can maintain a store that sells only consoles and console accessories though i bought my PS4 there because i wanted it that day & the mall is right around the corner
Jordan Martinez
Jesus
Nolan Myers
Yeah, come to think of it, I haven't seen a place sell PC games for some time
Brandon Evans
i know, man :/ it's just a bloodborne and netflix machine at this point
Ian Evans
Did you buy it used at least?
Luke Perez
How should Gamestop reinvent itself if they were to get new management?
Jaxson Allen
I still like to get physical copies, but I recently realized they're useless since the console actually copies the game to the hard drive anyway. I'm still losing valuable disk space.
Angel Bailey
A digital storefront with physical games on demand instead of bulk.
Ayden Cox
Amazon will buy them out and you get physical game deliveries from drones.
Josiah Nelson
They'rr not useless since you're not dependent on Sonys shitty servers and you won't lose all your games if theres some Account fuckery between gens.
Adam Peterson
hell yes, and i used that program you can use on credit cards where you send the card company your receipt and they adjust the price if it sells at a lower price 60 days later. got it at the black friday price when they probably weren't selling used ones that day (because they are a shitty company and they do that kind of thing)
Carson Peterson
That would be amazing and could actually save physical, too bad it will never happen, at least not in due time.
Robert Fisher
Reminder that there is no reason to buy a console at launch where, launch titles aside, you're just given a promise of there being more worthwhile games in the future to drop additional money on. I still don't have a PS4, nor a Wii U, Switch, or Xbone for that matter, namely because there hasn't been enough of interest on any of them to feel they warrant a purchase from me yet. Meanwhile my PS3 and, hell, PS2, still see plenty of use.
Gamestop does have a PC section, but it's like a row or so on the side of one of the small shelves and just for stuff like World of Warcraft or Starcraft if memory serves. I could be wrong, but I don't think most current PC games even get a proper physical print anyhow, sadly.
Yeah, it's a bit silly that apparently even Blu-ray (or whatever other disc formats there are these days) just doesn't cut it for being able to play games properly, and thus require some amount of installing. Still, at least with a disc, you can install it without needing a connection, as I don't expect the PSN or eshops for various now older systems will continue to be directly supported as a means of putting games on them.
Jaxson Evans
Nicely done
Jeremiah Lee
Actually, perhaps "promise" is the wrong word there. "Notion" might be better, as the modern industry is rather prone to disappointing.
Jaxson Kelly
Why not change itself into a coffee shop,Lan gaming center,video game store, and a traditional hobby center such as models and table top gaming?
Dominic Thompson
Because Kikes
Andrew Miller
something like this but with coffee,lan gaming,and physical games to sell.
Sebastian Sullivan
In fairness to Gamestop, stupid shit like toys and other non-vidya have significantly better margins and higher returns. That and the amount of new let alone good vidya coming out has decreased significantly.
I don't know if you anons are old enough to remember, but in the early PS2 days, games were coming out all the goddamn time and you had a huge library of other stuff to choose from. Outside of the shovelware glut during the peak of the Wii's popularity, the amount of annual new releases has narrowed.
If they hadn't diversified their business years ago, they would've already gone bankrupt.
Funny thing is, I don't see anything on the horizon that's going to reverse their fortunes. Even if VR caught on and was the next big thing, the games would still be sold digitally. Hell, most games sold in Gamestop are just cd keys in boxes if you're getting anything on PC.
Benjamin Richardson
Theres no problem with the amount of games nowadays If anything, theres even more now than there was durimg 7th Gen, especially after the financial crisis. And some really nice games have came out from that, especially since UE4, Unity and Cryengine are really low in price.
Problem has you said, is quality and nowadays, politics.
Nicholas Flores
Why the fuck do they remove the plastic wrap on the game when you buy it? A guy did that once and I said "I'm not paying for that. Get a new one."
Liam Turner
Probably doesn't help matters when you've got places like EB Games in Ausfailia deciding to stop selling certain games (Gal*Gun, I think) and even trying to coerce people that did buy them to return them to get as many copies as they could out of the country.
I don't recall that ever happening to me there, though admittedly I rarely go there, be it for new or used games. I do remember that when they got in a reprint shipment of Xenoblade, they took the wrappers off, marked them as preowned, and priced them under their own $90 (at the time) preowned price to try to get in on a slice of that scalper pie. Disgusting.