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RetroFlorida - Classic Home Gaming and Vintage Computers => Modern Video Games & Computer Entertainment => Topic started by: number six on July 05, 2017, 11:07:06 PM
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So saw the big 'buy 2 get 1 free' banner at Gamestop over the holiday weekend. They don't have these all that often anymore so figured I'd give it a go. Haven't been in a Gamestop in probably 3 or 4 months..
Yeah OK. So, they are really hot on those POP figures and misc. stuff now.. whatever.
Biggest thing though was the state of their used games. I mean, you'd have to be insane to buy a new game from them given any new game can be had for 40%-60% off @ Amazon if you wait 2-3 months after launch.. so their used games is usually the draw especially during the b2g1 sales. But wow.. 60% of them were disc only. By that I mean they were in DVD cases with generic gamestop covers. So you get 1 probably scratched / maybe resurfaced disc.. and that's it.
Then comes the fact that these disc only games weren't exactly cheap either.. maybe a few dollars under new.
I know Gamestop closed a bunch of stores.. I'm hoping they do get knocked down a bit. Them blowing out what.. 3 or 4 chains just locally.. and god knows how many nationwide has created this screwed up monopoly. Their kinda like Blockbuster.. when they finally bite it I definitely won't be missing them.
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They've always been shitty, I'm not surprised they're getting worse as they get desperate.
I think the last time I was in a GameStop was when I was buying my X360 - whenever Gears of War 1 came out, it was shortly after that - so quite a few years ago.
I bought the system and 3 or 4 new games, nothing used.
When I wouldn't buy the magazine subscription, or extended warranty, or shitty 3rd party controller or any of the other dozen-or-so things they tried to add on the girl behind the register nearly cried. Not her fault, I know they make them push that crap but do they seriously not understand that makes a lot of people never come back? I sure as hell didn't.
Those "Funko" things baffle me too, generic figure, nothing interesting to begin with, then just various licenses draped over it. I don't get the appeal. "Want to collect a bunch of things that all look the same?" I understand why GameStop wants to sell other crap, since games will continue going all-digital, but those specific figures I don't understand the appeal.
The LEGO stuff makes a bit more sense, if you're fond of LEGO and Batman, yeah, I could see buying a LEGO Batman toy, but the Funko POP toys weren't ever a thing on their own, it's all just the secondary license.
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Gamestop baffles me as well. I've seen OEM cases and labels in the TRASH while they've a half-dozen generic Gamestop cases on the used game shelf. Blows me away.
Maybe I'm old school, but it still blows me away that Gamestop managed to buy out EB, which to me, was the far superior store. But eh....
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I like Game Informer.. ok I like it by default as its the last (?) US game magazine left. So I go in once a year to renew my Power Rewards card pretty much only to get the magazine.
Of course they are all about preorders and junk but the only thing I ever preordered was the DragonAge Inquisition SE because it was a Gamestop exclusive so I had no choice. Otherwise preorders are stupid.. it's not like the NES days where games were available in limited numbers so you'd have to wait 3 months if you missed the initial release. So why preorder? What if it turns out the game sucks? There are so many reasons why waiting makes more sense over preordering.
The Pops have to be getting close to falling apart. I don't particularly like the damn things and I have 4 or 5 that I got through loot crates or promos or whatever. I certainly wouldn't want to be sitting on 300 of them with they go beanie baby (they will).
And they have goofy policies on games. I remember buying Morrowind for the XBOX there, apparently somebody traded in a case of new ones.. but they don't resell new so they opened each of them and sold them as used even though they were new. Whatever, i guess that makes some sense because what if somebody sold you bootlegs or counterfits or something but still. I also only buy used discs that are immaculate. Oh theres a 30 day warranty if theres a scratch.. yeah and hopefully you get to the part of the game that doesn't work before 30 days.. if not get wrecked.
As to how they bought up all the chains.. Electronics Boutique, Babbages, Software Etc., Funco, etc. etc. etc. who knows. I can only assume they had a lot of money and decided to just corner the market. It's like when EA spent how many every kajillion dollars to buy the exclusive sports rights.. nobody else could do that and while it cost them a lot now you buy Madden or you don't play NFL.
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Some of the problems are that babbages, and the other companies all had very similar retail models and it wasnt sustainable then.. and its to the point where it isnt sustainable now.. gamestop probably thought that if they bought everyone out that they would have a niche cornered market and they really dont, because
1.) online retailers can give you the same if not better deals/options without leaving your home and being upsold
2.) too many people offer core game purchasing options (walmart/target/tru)
3.) privately owned "used game stores" have a little better option for buying/selling/trading when it comes to the barder ability and not need to upsell
The idea of the funko pops are cool - but they are WAY over produced and overly "traded" on in mass retail - they where cool when they where smaller brand scale.. now everything is a pop.. its too much.
I love how gamestop has expanded past games to a "nerdier" genre customer base where you can get some of the collectibles they carry without needing to wait to the next comic con (used to love waiting for C2E2 and wizard world chicago when I lived in west michigan) having it readily available is nice and all .. but too little too late.
Gamestop needs to change their tatics, change the third party upsale, make used games a better price offering, better trade in values, and MAYBE they can move the scale a little more.. they need to get demo units back in store as well as change the layouts.. the last 3 or 4 that I have been into look like a fleamarket and not a game store.
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Gamestop bought everyone out what.. 10 years ago? They all had the same business model so obviously it was sustainable at the time because Gamestop is only just now having problems.
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Gamestop bought everyone out what.. 10 years ago? They all had the same business model so obviously it was sustainable at the time because Gamestop is only just now having problems.
obvious problems now are the result of over a decade of stupid decisions. :P
radio shack had decades of stupid decisions. and where are they now?
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The writing was on the wall when the damn console sections took over what used to be PC game stores...I'm betting we spent way more money ;-)
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The writing was on the wall when the damn console sections took over what used to be PC game stores...I'm betting we spent way more money ;-)
Steam...
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Forgot about this thread... I'm not used to not seeing updates to threads that I reply to in a forum! :P
I think one of the main reasons for Gamestop's decline is that we now have a generation and a half of kids that spend 90-100% of what a physical item costs... and they happily do it as a digital download that may, and likely will, disappear from the servers, be unrecoverable if their HD crashes, or only have a single download available per purchase (use-one online game codes, anyone?)
They've grown up in that environment, think nothing of the lack of secondary sales for digital goods, think that they still "own" something that they can't physically hold (rather than a revoke-able license for whatever they digitally download)
It's the same with DVD sales. CD sales. Etc. Anyone been in a Best Buy lately? They used to have 10 racks of CDs... now? Maybe 1. And it's mostly new release and boxset stuff. Movies? About 3 racks where 6-8 used to be normal.
Sadly, we as a society have allowed the content providers to move on to a digital world, a place where IP will disappear from new/used shelves "forever" when a company is bought out, or where it doesn't make enough money. At least until it becomes "retro" and then they re-release it 10 different ways as quick cash-grabs for the nostalgic.
I remember reading back in the day where book publishers claimed that new books had such high price tags because over 50% went to the publishers. Then out came ebooks, and we generally only saw a 10-15% reduction in cost from the physical books. Why? There's no publishing cost. No printing press. No binding. No ink. Nothing! - Then the publishers passed off the high ebook cost because they had to pay the author, the editor, the cover artist, the marketer, the publishing company... all the things that they had to do anyway, with a significant and lasting savings on the publishing costs, as well as the marketing (when you don't have to open print ads and you just have a free facebook/twitter/snapchat/etc, marketing costs go down exponentially)... well... you get the idea.
Call me cynical... but I don't own anything if I can't hold it. Digital goods are great - if they're cheap enough that I don't care when the servers go offline or the publishers no longer offer the content.
In the meantime.. places like Gamestop, in light of the digital world we live in... they're forced to branch out - become the flea market, turning off many long term customers like me. But for those new customers that know nothing different - they'll continue to shop there whenever the need is met. And increasingly, that will be online, outside of brick and mortors, and more and more into the digital realm where convenience exists.
Gamestop won't last another 10 years. I'll be quite surprised if they survive past the current gen systems, tbh.
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This is why digital hoarding is so important! Or so I keep telling myself.
Regardless, whenever the internet goes down I've got my terrabytes upon terrabytes of redundant storage full of stuff, much of which I've never watched/read/played/listened to. Power goes out and I'm fucked though.
I am screwed on my Steam library if they shut that down, but it's such a cash-cow for Valve that I don't really foresee that happening in my lifetime. Plus I have to admit that a good chunk of that is 1) Things I've played but will never play again, 2) Games that just weren't for me, not up my alley, 3) Utter garbage, largely parts of bundles where I wanted two or three items but they came with twelve.
I sold off all my music CDs (after ripping them all, of course) in the very early 2000s because I could see where this was going. May as well get a few bucks out of them while they were still worth... a few bucks. Still have all the files, multiple backups, all good.
I've got a footlocker full of DVDs (and a few Blu-Rays) that I should have sold years ago, but I was too lazy about it. I've got 90% of them as digital files already too. Unfortunately it's not really worth selling the collection unless I can find someone who wants to haul it all off at once (unlikely).
Plus I've got them all on a high shelf - no idea how the hell I managed to get them up there, because I tried to take them down once and it was too damn heavy - and it should be a lot easier to get them down than put them up, so I'm baffled as to how I did it in the first place - I know I didn't have help for that.
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Personally... I prefer physical media for movies. Though I could change that if I ever went through the trouble to setup a real media server, had the internet service at home to make it worthwhile (rural area = sucky unreliable internet), and could afford to truly keep my data redundant and online in a raid array....
One day maybe :) until then. Physical media is cheap on the secondary market.
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Gamestop bought ThinkGeek- that's why they have so much other non-game, figures, etc.
https://techcrunch.com/2015/06/15/gamestop-buys-thinkgeek/