Basically, if they don't want to just carve the company up for spare parts and walk away, the options for Gamestop are "Use the space they have to draw people in and sell products" whether this is through makespace style stuff, converting space to run arcade like setups/host game-related events (Imagine Gamestop becoming Internet cafes or some unholy esports version of a gym), or pivot to actively marketing other physical nerd merch. The other option is shedding the physical space entirely and just operating via the website and trying to compete on pricing, though personally I think this is the weaker idea since having physical space allows them way deeper penetration into various markets, and since they already have it that cost is already factored into budgets.
But y'know, watch as nobody who matters learns from this whole thing and GME just keeps limping along with meme investors keeping them afloat past their prime.
"Go down, kick ass, and set yourselves up as gods, that's our Prime Directive!"
Or you could just run the company into the ground and split with the cash
Glad I'm not the only one who saw vultures.
It's capitalism, the vultures are built-in and unremovable.
Edit: I feel like what some people forget about capitalism is the same thing all my anti-socialist family members forget about socialism: Yes there will always be people who exploit because humans, man, and capitalism encourages and rewards exploitation so the problem is exacerbated. But humans also like to achieve things, like to be able to say "this job is done because I did it." My family thinks that in a world of socialism nothing would ever get done because no one gets paid extra to do it, even though that they know their own brains and how hyper-vigilant they all can be about how "this job needs to be done right", how none of them (outside of a couple of the damaged ones) could actually stand doing nothing all day at their job. It seems like this thread/forum has a similar problem in not understanding that yeah the vultures will be there but there will also be those same hyper-vigilant people who love to see a problem cleared away and fixed as if it were their drug. And you can try to take away someone's drug but if they're powerful enough they just aren't going to let you. The dependant factor is whether the fixers are in power at gamestop or the vultures. We won't really know for years to come.
Cambiata on
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
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Dark Raven XLaugh hard, run fast,be kindRegistered Userregular
I feel like the big, obvious and tantalizing market for em is retro consoles and games, but if I recall correctly, they made a concerted effort to destroy retro consoles and games. :I
GME completed their equity offering today, diluting the share pool by 3.5m for about $551m. The stock spiked to $198 after hours after increasing $20 over the day.
So... to recap. Ryan Cohen (Now chairman board) and his Chewy and Amazon crew are in control of the board of directors, the CEO is on his way out, GME is completely debt free with zero restrictions, the stock is around $185, and they also have about $600-700m on hand cash to begin the restructuring of the company.
It's happening.gif?
I don't know that there is a future, successful Gamestop that in any way resembles last year's struggling, possibly-doomed Gamestop.
Like sure there could be a Gamestop three years from now that consistently produces profitable quarters, but is that a Gamestop selling video games in malls and strip malls? Is it even a Gamestop selling video games on the internet? Both of those industries have headwinds: in the case of physical retail, the strangulation of retail by the combined forces of late stage capitalism (private equity, the rentier class squeezing those stones for blood ever harder) and shifting consumer preferences (digital distribution); in the latter case, a field dominated by a handful of established players already engaged in a race to the bottom (Steam and Epic), and proprietary first party distribution platforms which lock out competition (Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo).
Where does a newly-capitalized revitalized Gamestop fit into this in a way that leads to lasting, long term success? It's hard to envision the existing business getting profitable again; so much of Gamestop under Paul Raines was about trying to expand the retail product line to diversify it against any one of them declining, but then he died from brain cancer and the leadership started selling off all the non-game business for cash. At one point Gamestop ran the single largest exclusive retail outlets for one of the major U.S. phone carriers, at a comfortable profit! And then divested it in order to burn a hundred million propping up the failing game business.
They tried diversifying, and self-amputated it all in the name of hitting analyst expectations for a quarterly earnings report because the CEO who championed the expansion couldn't object due to being six feet under.
It has become a deeply mismanaged company and the new leadership is going to have an uphill battle trying to turn it into something it isn't. I would wish them well, except I'm pretty sure everyone in the C-suite has a Plan B that solely consists of "quit while my stock options are worth a fucking fortune."
They no longer have burdensome debt payments requiring quick sales of sustainable/profitable units
They could be anything, just like how Nintendo used to be a card company
Those six thousand or so retail leases weigh the company down quite a bit.
Like I said in the first of a small number of paragraphs:
I don't know that there is a future, successful Gamestop that in any way resembles last year's struggling, possibly-doomed Gamestop
I am skeptical that a CEO best known for selling a money-losing startup to its biggest established competitor for a fortune has the resume necessary to turn a $5 billion business back into a $10 billion business. The Chewy approach doesn't work because in the startup playbook, the established competitor you grow big enough to threaten and then get bought by is Gamestop.
"It could be anything" as long as "anything" either uses its sizable retail footprint to its advantage, or closes thousands of locations while burning money by breaking leases in the process.
Or you could just run the company into the ground and split with the cash
I don’t know if extinguishing debt with an equity offering is the best play for this
They don’t own the capital this created, all those new shareholders do- they still just have the same comp packages they always had, largely made up of stock, which would have been worth just as much (usually more, actually) before diluting with extra shares
I just chuckled at the thought that someone might have considered buying GameStop (the company, not the stock....like maybe an Amazon that wanted the physical distribution or something) and then stopped themselves because it looked like an absolute train wreck, but now it’s so well-financed it would be more attractive.....except the market cap is way too much to bear
Personally I still buy most of my games in physical stores, and will continue to do so for the for as long as they exist. I was lucky in that the 2 local games tops to me were very well run and had good managers who were pretty in touch with their clientele; one off them did just recently close though. I can still see them as a niche geek retail store, but they need to stop dicking around like they've been and actually get it right. So, who knows it's 50 50 probably.
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ButtersA glass of some milksRegistered Userregular
Fuckin board games, do demo nights and shit, it's so fuckin straightforward as a lateral movement. Literally still a game stop. It's just different games you're stopping for.
Board games and nerd gear are a way smaller market than video games. I have probably spent tens of thousands on video games and hardware in my lifetime and maybe a few hundred on Think Geek style nerd gear. The difference in scale between those markets is massive.
Outside of subscription games like wow, I have absolutely spent more on board games than video games.
Shit I think D&D alone accounts for thousands of dollars in my board game budget.
I imagine everyone prioritizes differently, but it's probably accurate to say video games are more profitable... but that doesn't mean you can't do both.
bowen on
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
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KoopahTroopahThe koopas, the troopas.Philadelphia, PARegistered Userregular
I also still like buying games in a physical way. I have very fond memories of going to GameStop as a kid to get the next Gameboys as they came out, and I prefer to own the physical copies of my games. The industry is swaying away from that sure, but honestly most of my perception of GameStop now is just tainted by bad trade-in value/practices. If Corp were to just fix that by offering competitive resell value and improved customer experience, then I'm sold.
Also, if you haven't yet recently. Try ordering something with same-day shipping on their site. It's Free Same Day Delivery over $35, and the stuff has shown up in ~2 hours for me. I'm skeptical like the rest of us, but the structure is there and news is only getting more positive since last year.
As to my understanding the actual margin on physical game distribution for new games is garbage. That's why the corner stones of their business model were subscription and credit based, or exploiting the resale market.
I hate the idea of paying for something I can't tangibly own, unless it's for something like a streaming service where the point is access to a large amount of content. For games (and TV shows and movies I especially like) I absolutely want a tangible item that won't one day stop being supported and rendered inaccessible.
EDIT: Of course I'm also a weirdo who occasionally downloads older YouTube videos I like out of fear that YouTube will one day stop supporting videos uploaded before a certain date.
I also still like buying games in a physical way. I have very fond memories of going to GameStop as a kid to get the next Gameboys as they came out, and I prefer to own the physical copies of my games. The industry is swaying away from that sure, but honestly most of my perception of GameStop now is just tainted by bad trade-in value/practices. If Corp were to just fix that by offering competitive resell value and improved customer experience, then I'm sold.
Also, if you haven't yet recently. Try ordering something with same-day shipping on their site. It's Free Same Day Delivery over $35, and the stuff has shown up in ~2 hours for me. I'm skeptical like the rest of us, but the structure is there and news is only getting more positive since last year.
Used game sales are going the way of the dodo at some point. It's been slower than it should have been because internet access infrastructure in the US is kind of pathetic, but it's days are unequivocally numbered.
Personally, my opinion of Gamestop is tainted enough that I actually consider one of the benefits of digital purchases to be that none of the profit ever goes to Gamestop. They'd have to work really hard to earn my favor back.
Some rumblings coming back out about AMC again, they certainly have better fundamentals and seem to still be oversold, but I assumed the squeeze was squazed on that one?
I was a Store Manager with GameStop for over 12 years. I enjoyed my time working there, but there are a LOt of issues.
Virtually EVERY suggestion in this thread has been tried by the company to this point.
-collectibles have good margin on them, but we sat on SO MUCH crap that would sit on clearance shelves at 75% off and never sell. GS buyers team was awful for collectibles and toys and would be severely behind on trends. Remember fidget spinners? Everyone had stopped buying them before we started getting cases upon cases of them in that would sit on the shelf. Anime stuff would sell out constantly and we’d never get restocks because they didn’t think it would sell. Rinse and repeat. Fire buyers and replace them? The new ones were WORSE.
-there is a batch of test stores in Tulsa that were dedicated to trying having rental gameplay stations, tables for board/card games, snacks, etc. The guy behind those was one of the execs they booted recently.
-Digital is fucking over new release sales of physical. All those midnight releases that disappeared? Largely because most of those people who want it that fast also like having a game preloaded. Those were also the biggest repeat customers and some of the best for things like addons. We went from 200 person release events to 30 or so.
The biggest problem they have is the staff in stores generally is overworked, underpaid, and they are doing their damndest to scare away anyone worth a damn. They’ve gotten rid of Assistant Managers in all but the bigger stores, run on skeleton crews of single coverage (WAY worse than even before.). People can’t get trained properly, so when someone leaves there is no one to promote and the pay/hours are so low you can’t external hire anyone worth a damn.
Also, about board and tabletop / rpg / miniatures and related game sales. Those can support a small business but the margins are really thin. You need a location with good population density (so not some stripmall in suburban / midwestern hell) but also a high-rent location will kill the business. So good spots in high traffic malls are usually suicide for such a business. EG: look at what happened to Wizards of the Coast themselves in the early 00s when they opened a chain of mall stores.
To actually make a decent living (rather than just scraping by on everything else) such stores absolutely rely on reselling singles for Magic The Gathering. And most of that business is online with the store itself just acting as a place to store, organize and ship the cards from. When other card games are in a fad situation (such as Pokemeon right now) that helps too. But Magic has been the backbone of the whole industry for over 20 years now.
When I worked as a retail monkey for Wizards of the Coast in 2001/2002 whenever we had a clearance sale the first people to show up were the owners of other hobby / board game shops in the area. Cause picking up a copy of Axis & Allies at 50% off from us was a better deal then what their distributors offered.
I can't help but get the nagging feeling that actually discussing the state of GameStop and whether it might be successful in the future is somehow off topic to discussing GameStop's stock value. Reality is so messed up.
I mean sell board games sure, but doing a proper board game/event space would take more room than any GS I’ve ever seen has had. Same for tabletop stuff or other model-building.
They have the same problem any mall retail has: that business model just looks increasing non viable for most things, never mind something squeezed as hard by digital sales as videogames
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
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zepherinRussian warship, go fuck yourselfRegistered Userregular
Also, about board and tabletop / rpg / miniatures and related game sales. Those can support a small business but the margins are really thin. You need a location with good population density (so not some stripmall in suburban / midwestern hell) but also a high-rent location will kill the business. So good spots in high traffic malls are usually suicide for such a business. EG: look at what happened to Wizards of the Coast themselves in the early 00s when they opened a chain of mall stores.
To actually make a decent living (rather than just scraping by on everything else) such stores absolutely rely on reselling singles for Magic The Gathering. And most of that business is online with the store itself just acting as a place to store, organize and ship the cards from. When other card games are in a fad situation (such as Pokemeon right now) that helps too. But Magic has been the backbone of the whole industry for over 20 years now.
The game store near us, which I hope is still open. Friday Night Magic was their big pull. Like almost half of their revenue was that. So I’m not sure what they are doing to stay afloat.
yeah, CCG/TCGs really are the main money maker at shops.
our local store the former owner (he has since sold it), actually bought the store on a loan right before Pokemon TCG first came out. He paid off the ENTIRE LOAN from Pokemon cards in the first year alone. He then was fine as long as the store paid for itself (since he had another job).
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
I was a Store Manager with GameStop for over 12 years. I enjoyed my time working there, but there are a LOt of issues.
Virtually EVERY suggestion in this thread has been tried by the company to this point.
-collectibles have good margin on them, but we sat on SO MUCH crap that would sit on clearance shelves at 75% off and never sell. GS buyers team was awful for collectibles and toys and would be severely behind on trends. Remember fidget spinners? Everyone had stopped buying them before we started getting cases upon cases of them in that would sit on the shelf. Anime stuff would sell out constantly and we’d never get restocks because they didn’t think it would sell. Rinse and repeat. Fire buyers and replace them? The new ones were WORSE.
-there is a batch of test stores in Tulsa that were dedicated to trying having rental gameplay stations, tables for board/card games, snacks, etc. The guy behind those was one of the execs they booted recently.
-Digital is fucking over new release sales of physical. All those midnight releases that disappeared? Largely because most of those people who want it that fast also like having a game preloaded. Those were also the biggest repeat customers and some of the best for things like addons. We went from 200 person release events to 30 or so.
The biggest problem they have is the staff in stores generally is overworked, underpaid, and they are doing their damndest to scare away anyone worth a damn. They’ve gotten rid of Assistant Managers in all but the bigger stores, run on skeleton crews of single coverage (WAY worse than even before.). People can’t get trained properly, so when someone leaves there is no one to promote and the pay/hours are so low you can’t external hire anyone worth a damn.
I think I was already pretty well on the idea that local Gamestops, with a staff and that you can browse, would probably be over. The thing that I figured the Chewy guy being involved meant was that Gamestop would shift to online-only, making the idea of having a store fully staffed moot. It also helps solve the "Stocking the wrong thing" problem, since a) you're not actually stocking anything locally, you're an online store and b) if everyone is signing up their email for the "let me know when this is back in stock" section of an item that you decided wouldn't sell, that's free marketing information on what you should buy.
The problem of buyers being failures I would assume could be fixed by market research, but that one is more up in the air for me.
What you're describing sounds like a lot of systemic issues with the corporate part of the business. But seeing as they are firing some C-suite people they may be clearing out the rot. Or they may not, impossible to say from the outside.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
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ButtersA glass of some milksRegistered Userregular
Online-only what though? PSN, Microsoft, and Nintendo all have their own online stores built right into the console operating system. The PC publishers are at war with Steam over territory that has been online-only for like 12-years and I don't see either side ceding ground for GameStop. The only thing left for them in the video game market would be hardware. The market that made up the very foundation of their business is going to be gone. I don't see how GameStop can go online-only without downsizing considerably.
The more I think about this I think the hedge funds doubts on GME's overall viability were sound but they misjudged the timing. They thought they could accelerate an inevitable demise that was years away not months.
Online-only what though? PSN, Microsoft, and Nintendo all have their own online stores built right into the console operating system. The PC publishers are at war with Steam over territory that has been online-only for like 12-years and I don't see either side ceding ground for GameStop. The only thing left for them in the video game market would be hardware. The market that made up the very foundation of their business is going to be gone. I don't see how GameStop can go online-only without downsizing considerably.
The more I think about this I think the hedge funds doubts on GME's overall viability were sound but they misjudged the timing. They thought they could accelerate an inevitable demise that was years away not months.
I dunno what, except "not games."
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
The thing is actual new game systems make next to no money. It’s been awhile since I looked at the reports, but retailers only make like $20 a console maybe. That’s why used was what GS focused so heavily on, a single used new release that sold for $55 on average would make them $20-30 (where new it would be more like $5-10)
Accessories are also a big winner for money making since they tend more toward a 35-50% margin depending on the item. If I were a betting man then it would be to see GS doubling down on the PC boom and putting a bigger focus on PC accessories to bolster their flagging used sales.
Online-only what though? PSN, Microsoft, and Nintendo all have their own online stores built right into the console operating system. The PC publishers are at war with Steam over territory that has been online-only for like 12-years and I don't see either side ceding ground for GameStop. The only thing left for them in the video game market would be hardware. The market that made up the very foundation of their business is going to be gone. I don't see how GameStop can go online-only without downsizing considerably.
The more I think about this I think the hedge funds doubts on GME's overall viability were sound but they misjudged the timing. They thought they could accelerate an inevitable demise that was years away not months.
Timing had nothing to do with it. Their short positions only failed to work because a couple of video game enthusiasts with irrational long positions rallied a larger number of gullible video game nerds into also taking long positions.
GME has now managed to leverage that irrationality into being better-off than it was before. At the expense of most of the believers, which doesn't stop the small number of those who cashed out from being the narrative.
The shorts will probably be right in the long run, it's just that the old maxim about how long the market can remain irrational (and it's corollary, the height to which irrationality can rise) kicked in.
I maintain that this couldn't have happened without a year in which casinos were closed, sports betting was extremely limited, and a lot of (mostly white mostly upper-middle class mostly white-collar) workers were sitting bored at home watching a stock market rise driven by the near-term profits of pandemic-favorable companies going up faster than the pandemic-favorable companies were hemorrhaging money market share and thought, surely I'm smarter than average and can use this to my advantage.
2020 will go down as the biggest sea change in market history since 1929, for totally different reasons.
The thing is actual new game systems make next to no money. It’s been awhile since I looked at the reports, but retailers only make like $20 a console maybe. That’s why used was what GS focused so heavily on, a single used new release that sold for $55 on average would make them $20-30 (where new it would be more like $5-10)
Accessories are also a big winner for money making since they tend more toward a 35-50% margin depending on the item. If I were a betting man then it would be to see GS doubling down on the PC boom and putting a bigger focus on PC accessories to bolster their flagging used sales.
Yes, waaaaaay back in my best buy days (PS3? era) I could save $0 on a console as an employee, but accessories were like 40-60% off. The Margins on the stuff you attach to the console is the moneymakers, not the consoles themselves.
I still say that rebranding as a place for pc hardware and peripherals is the place to be, like mini-Microcenters in malls. Have a digital storefront like Newegg but leverage your BnM stores for basic PC parts (say, ~3 SKUs of the latest CPU, half a dozen compatible mobos, one each of RGB/non-RGB RAM, enough to build a basic gaming rig or drop in for a replacement part because something broke in yours). Have some space for the gaming peripherals that you need to see in person (VR headsets, high-freq or HDR monitors, maybe a couple chairs, etc) plus keyboards, mice, headsets. Offer free in-store pickup for online orders.
Even with that, there's probably enough room left in even a cramped mall storefront for some AAA console and PC games.
I still say that rebranding as a place for pc hardware and peripherals is the place to be, like mini-Microcenters in malls. Have a digital storefront like Newegg but leverage your BnM stores for basic PC parts (say, ~3 SKUs of the latest CPU, half a dozen compatible mobos, one each of RGB/non-RGB RAM, enough to build a basic gaming rig or drop in for a replacement part because something broke in yours). Have some space for the gaming peripherals that you need to see in person (VR headsets, high-freq or HDR monitors, maybe a couple chairs, etc) plus keyboards, mice, headsets. Offer free in-store pickup for online orders.
Even with that, there's probably enough room left in even a cramped mall storefront for some AAA console and PC games.
A single empty spot on the shelf for graphics cards. Which one? All of them.
Online-only what though? PSN, Microsoft, and Nintendo all have their own online stores built right into the console operating system. The PC publishers are at war with Steam over territory that has been online-only for like 12-years and I don't see either side ceding ground for GameStop. The only thing left for them in the video game market would be hardware. The market that made up the very foundation of their business is going to be gone. I don't see how GameStop can go online-only without downsizing considerably.
The more I think about this I think the hedge funds doubts on GME's overall viability were sound but they misjudged the timing. They thought they could accelerate an inevitable demise that was years away not months.
Timing had nothing to do with it. Their short positions only failed to work because a couple of video game enthusiasts with irrational long positions rallied a larger number of gullible video game nerds into also taking long positions.
GME has now managed to leverage that irrationality into being better-off than it was before. At the expense of most of the believers, which doesn't stop the small number of those who cashed out from being the narrative.
The shorts will probably be right in the long run, it's just that the old maxim about how long the market can remain irrational (and it's corollary, the height to which irrationality can rise) kicked in.
I maintain that this couldn't have happened without a year in which casinos were closed, sports betting was extremely limited, and a lot of (mostly white mostly upper-middle class mostly white-collar) workers were sitting bored at home watching a stock market rise driven by the near-term profits of pandemic-favorable companies going up faster than the pandemic-favorable companies were hemorrhaging money market share and thought, surely I'm smarter than average and can use this to my advantage.
2020 will go down as the biggest sea change in market history since 1929, for totally different reasons.
The gullible nerds were inspired by a few rational actors who suspected GME was undervalued based on public information. I agree the shorters will probably be right in the long run but I question their timing because at the time they were shorting like mad GMEs books weren't even bad. They weren't great but they were fine and it turned out the hedgers didn't have any additional insight over contributors to a sub-reddit. They were gambling same as nerds were.
I still say that rebranding as a place for pc hardware and peripherals is the place to be, like mini-Microcenters in malls. Have a digital storefront like Newegg but leverage your BnM stores for basic PC parts (say, ~3 SKUs of the latest CPU, half a dozen compatible mobos, one each of RGB/non-RGB RAM, enough to build a basic gaming rig or drop in for a replacement part because something broke in yours). Have some space for the gaming peripherals that you need to see in person (VR headsets, high-freq or HDR monitors, maybe a couple chairs, etc) plus keyboards, mice, headsets. Offer free in-store pickup for online orders.
Even with that, there's probably enough room left in even a cramped mall storefront for some AAA console and PC games.
They are doing some of this, they have new storefront space for PC parts, gaming chairs, etc. They're selling gaming keyboards, mice, what not, as well as GPUs. Not sure on the other PC parts though.
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KoopahTroopahThe koopas, the troopas.Philadelphia, PARegistered Userregular
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But y'know, watch as nobody who matters learns from this whole thing and GME just keeps limping along with meme investors keeping them afloat past their prime.
Glad I'm not the only one who saw vultures.
It's capitalism, the vultures are built-in and unremovable.
Edit: I feel like what some people forget about capitalism is the same thing all my anti-socialist family members forget about socialism: Yes there will always be people who exploit because humans, man, and capitalism encourages and rewards exploitation so the problem is exacerbated. But humans also like to achieve things, like to be able to say "this job is done because I did it." My family thinks that in a world of socialism nothing would ever get done because no one gets paid extra to do it, even though that they know their own brains and how hyper-vigilant they all can be about how "this job needs to be done right", how none of them (outside of a couple of the damaged ones) could actually stand doing nothing all day at their job. It seems like this thread/forum has a similar problem in not understanding that yeah the vultures will be there but there will also be those same hyper-vigilant people who love to see a problem cleared away and fixed as if it were their drug. And you can try to take away someone's drug but if they're powerful enough they just aren't going to let you. The dependant factor is whether the fixers are in power at gamestop or the vultures. We won't really know for years to come.
Those six thousand or so retail leases weigh the company down quite a bit.
Like I said in the first of a small number of paragraphs:
I am skeptical that a CEO best known for selling a money-losing startup to its biggest established competitor for a fortune has the resume necessary to turn a $5 billion business back into a $10 billion business. The Chewy approach doesn't work because in the startup playbook, the established competitor you grow big enough to threaten and then get bought by is Gamestop.
"It could be anything" as long as "anything" either uses its sizable retail footprint to its advantage, or closes thousands of locations while burning money by breaking leases in the process.
I don’t know if extinguishing debt with an equity offering is the best play for this
They don’t own the capital this created, all those new shareholders do- they still just have the same comp packages they always had, largely made up of stock, which would have been worth just as much (usually more, actually) before diluting with extra shares
Board games and nerd gear are a way smaller market than video games. I have probably spent tens of thousands on video games and hardware in my lifetime and maybe a few hundred on Think Geek style nerd gear. The difference in scale between those markets is massive.
Shit I think D&D alone accounts for thousands of dollars in my board game budget.
I imagine everyone prioritizes differently, but it's probably accurate to say video games are more profitable... but that doesn't mean you can't do both.
Also, if you haven't yet recently. Try ordering something with same-day shipping on their site. It's Free Same Day Delivery over $35, and the stuff has shown up in ~2 hours for me. I'm skeptical like the rest of us, but the structure is there and news is only getting more positive since last year.
Twitch: KoopahTroopah - Steam: Koopah
EDIT: Of course I'm also a weirdo who occasionally downloads older YouTube videos I like out of fear that YouTube will one day stop supporting videos uploaded before a certain date.
Used game sales are going the way of the dodo at some point. It's been slower than it should have been because internet access infrastructure in the US is kind of pathetic, but it's days are unequivocally numbered.
Virtually EVERY suggestion in this thread has been tried by the company to this point.
-collectibles have good margin on them, but we sat on SO MUCH crap that would sit on clearance shelves at 75% off and never sell. GS buyers team was awful for collectibles and toys and would be severely behind on trends. Remember fidget spinners? Everyone had stopped buying them before we started getting cases upon cases of them in that would sit on the shelf. Anime stuff would sell out constantly and we’d never get restocks because they didn’t think it would sell. Rinse and repeat. Fire buyers and replace them? The new ones were WORSE.
-there is a batch of test stores in Tulsa that were dedicated to trying having rental gameplay stations, tables for board/card games, snacks, etc. The guy behind those was one of the execs they booted recently.
-Digital is fucking over new release sales of physical. All those midnight releases that disappeared? Largely because most of those people who want it that fast also like having a game preloaded. Those were also the biggest repeat customers and some of the best for things like addons. We went from 200 person release events to 30 or so.
The biggest problem they have is the staff in stores generally is overworked, underpaid, and they are doing their damndest to scare away anyone worth a damn. They’ve gotten rid of Assistant Managers in all but the bigger stores, run on skeleton crews of single coverage (WAY worse than even before.). People can’t get trained properly, so when someone leaves there is no one to promote and the pay/hours are so low you can’t external hire anyone worth a damn.
To actually make a decent living (rather than just scraping by on everything else) such stores absolutely rely on reselling singles for Magic The Gathering. And most of that business is online with the store itself just acting as a place to store, organize and ship the cards from. When other card games are in a fad situation (such as Pokemeon right now) that helps too. But Magic has been the backbone of the whole industry for over 20 years now.
There's a crypto thread.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
the margins on board, tabletop, miniature and card games are thin
And in the years since the early 00s things have only shifted more and more in favor of the distributor (for a lot of these things its a monopoly now)
They have the same problem any mall retail has: that business model just looks increasing non viable for most things, never mind something squeezed as hard by digital sales as videogames
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
The game store near us, which I hope is still open. Friday Night Magic was their big pull. Like almost half of their revenue was that. So I’m not sure what they are doing to stay afloat.
our local store the former owner (he has since sold it), actually bought the store on a loan right before Pokemon TCG first came out. He paid off the ENTIRE LOAN from Pokemon cards in the first year alone. He then was fine as long as the store paid for itself (since he had another job).
I think I was already pretty well on the idea that local Gamestops, with a staff and that you can browse, would probably be over. The thing that I figured the Chewy guy being involved meant was that Gamestop would shift to online-only, making the idea of having a store fully staffed moot. It also helps solve the "Stocking the wrong thing" problem, since a) you're not actually stocking anything locally, you're an online store and b) if everyone is signing up their email for the "let me know when this is back in stock" section of an item that you decided wouldn't sell, that's free marketing information on what you should buy.
The problem of buyers being failures I would assume could be fixed by market research, but that one is more up in the air for me.
What you're describing sounds like a lot of systemic issues with the corporate part of the business. But seeing as they are firing some C-suite people they may be clearing out the rot. Or they may not, impossible to say from the outside.
The more I think about this I think the hedge funds doubts on GME's overall viability were sound but they misjudged the timing. They thought they could accelerate an inevitable demise that was years away not months.
I dunno what, except "not games."
Accessories are also a big winner for money making since they tend more toward a 35-50% margin depending on the item. If I were a betting man then it would be to see GS doubling down on the PC boom and putting a bigger focus on PC accessories to bolster their flagging used sales.
Timing had nothing to do with it. Their short positions only failed to work because a couple of video game enthusiasts with irrational long positions rallied a larger number of gullible video game nerds into also taking long positions.
GME has now managed to leverage that irrationality into being better-off than it was before. At the expense of most of the believers, which doesn't stop the small number of those who cashed out from being the narrative.
The shorts will probably be right in the long run, it's just that the old maxim about how long the market can remain irrational (and it's corollary, the height to which irrationality can rise) kicked in.
I maintain that this couldn't have happened without a year in which casinos were closed, sports betting was extremely limited, and a lot of (mostly white mostly upper-middle class mostly white-collar) workers were sitting bored at home watching a stock market rise driven by the near-term profits of pandemic-favorable companies going up faster than the pandemic-favorable companies were hemorrhaging money market share and thought, surely I'm smarter than average and can use this to my advantage.
2020 will go down as the biggest sea change in market history since 1929, for totally different reasons.
Yes, waaaaaay back in my best buy days (PS3? era) I could save $0 on a console as an employee, but accessories were like 40-60% off. The Margins on the stuff you attach to the console is the moneymakers, not the consoles themselves.
Even with that, there's probably enough room left in even a cramped mall storefront for some AAA console and PC games.
A single empty spot on the shelf for graphics cards. Which one? All of them.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
The gullible nerds were inspired by a few rational actors who suspected GME was undervalued based on public information. I agree the shorters will probably be right in the long run but I question their timing because at the time they were shorting like mad GMEs books weren't even bad. They weren't great but they were fine and it turned out the hedgers didn't have any additional insight over contributors to a sub-reddit. They were gambling same as nerds were.
They are doing some of this, they have new storefront space for PC parts, gaming chairs, etc. They're selling gaming keyboards, mice, what not, as well as GPUs. Not sure on the other PC parts though.
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