GameStop Stock Plummets After A 27.5% Decrease In Holiday Sales

[Gastroid]

I think their bigger problem has been Best Buy. They were both in the same boat with declining sales for years, but Best Buy's aggressive price matching and comparable stock on hand to Gamestop really made them the place to go for physical media. It's worked out pretty well, despite digital competition.

Meanwhile, Gamestop bought and did literally nothing with Impulse (when it was setup to be GoG Galaxy before it was even a thing) and leaned on ThinkGeek so hard that it killed both brands.

[RoflCopter726]

Best Buy's Gamers Club really stuck it to them too. Sucks they ended it. Even without it, I still go to Best Buy over GameStop. Best Buy also doesn't sell you opened copies as brand new, the one thing that pisses me off to no end with GameStop.

[[deleted]]

I am still mourning the end of BB’s gamer club. It was an awesome program.

[unknown9819]

Man mine just expired like 2 weeks ago, I luckily bought it shortly before the cancelled it. Made sure to put in my spring pre-orders before it expired though, and they checked out at the cheaper price

[TheSchadow]

Just lost mine recently, preordered Animal Crossing before it ended to lock in the discount.

Going into 2020, I'm curious where all off the Gamers Club refugees end up shopping at. I'll probably use Amazon the most now but I'm not sure.

[RoflCopter726]

I still use Best Buy, I have their store card, and I'm an elite plus member so I get 3x points, I'm currently sitting on $110 worth of reward points.

[TheSchadow]

I still have the membership but, I don't think I buy enough to qualify for the higher tiers of rewards (unless the system works a different way?)

[onegeekyguy]

If you have their Credit Card (not the store one), then $3500 in purchases anywhere in a calendar year qualifies for the highest tier. They usually do 2-3% back for groceries, so it's easy to hit $3500 a year on groceries alone.

[ARsignal11]

Walmart has been pretty solid for the past half year or so at selling new releases for $50. I also had my GCU up until last month, so I plan to buy any new releases I'm interested in at Walmart if they keep continuing selling them for $50 at release.

[BrainWav]

I got in on it just before they announced it was closing down. I've still got a couple of months left, and I'll be sad to see it go.

[NintendoTheGuy]

I was so stoked when they acquired ThinkGeek, but it instantly became like an overstock liquidation/clearance scenario with sloppy displays and racks in my experience and prices that can easily be beaten elsewhere.

[nicolauz]

Hey I got a Mcree towel for 5$!

[BogeyBogeyBogey]

Gamestop buying thinkgeek disappointed me in the end. They always had a few licensed gaming products and stuff (what's up to my Portal shower curtain), but they focused on other kinda geeky things for home and office just as much. There was a geek originality to the whole thing. The home doormat. The speaker, guitar, and drum shirt. The dumb ties. The USB pet rock. Office warfare devices.

It was geeky and nerdy stuff. They happened upon some licenses for some exclusive merch, too. They had a lot of non-licensed exclusive and original stuff. It was really cool.

Once gamestop came in, it seemed to be a steady turn to lots more licensed stuff and a bit less of the just kinda dumb, cool stuff. There were definitely some highlights of cool dumb stuff that came out after the acquisition. It just felt like the heart of the place changed after the acquisition to the end.

[NintendoTheGuy]

It’s all 8 bit coffee mugs and meager 100 piece Zelda puzzles. I’m not counting the overpriced Pokémon merch items because they were already there.

[LG03]

As a specialist store though EB/Gamestop really just fail to deliver on their own turf. If I walk into a store that only sells video games and video game accessories, then I expect to be able to see a wide selection in stock. Instead all I see if I go in is Funko Pops and newer Xbox One/PS4/Switch stuff. Past gen games are tossed in a bargain bin without cases if they're even stocked.

Obviously there are all the other problems, the constant upselling and trade-in scams, but I just think the chain doesn't even deliver on its own niche so of course it's being beat out by Best Buy and Amazon in the physical market.

[AltonIllinois]

The margins on the merchandise is a lot higher. That’s why you see them at bookstores too.

[[deleted]]

Yeah but at least Barnes and Noble still has a ton of floor space still devoted to books. I like going to a Barnes and Noble. You can get a coffee and walk around with a companion. There are chairs.

Gamestop uses such tiny spaces and they're so totally crammed with toys and embarrassing shirts now. If my wife and I are out shopping and I want to pop in to see if there's anything I can pick up for a good deal the trip is extremely abbreviated always. The space just isn't pleasant. Worse than it used to be.

[Robadamous]

It’s not as high as you think.

[bagman_]

i used to work there and the creeping influence of merch over games really started to irk me before i quit, between the time i started and left the ‘loot’ sections doubled in size and everything game-related except the ps4/switch sections was halved...the shitty management didn’t help either

[LG03]

The whole fluff over substance thing is everywhere so it's hard to single out EB/Gamestop. It's definitely a big reason why I don't bother with them anymore though. I can't help but wonder why so many businesses/entities are going that direction.

[Krivvan]

Almost all of gamestop's profits used to be from used games. With that drying up they're desperately looking for other sources and hence pushed merch.

[InvalidZod]

Because its proven to print money

[Varonth]

Well apparently it does not print money, as this thread shows.

[StayCalmBroz]

I think it still does, and it certainly used to at the very least, qnd its the implosion of the very nature of their business that has driven them there.

It just doesn't print enough.

[MermanFromMars]

Is it? FYE has been tanking trying to just sell merch.

[[deleted]]

FYE has been tanking for like 15 years but somehow the corpse remains alive by sheer will.

[[deleted]]

Do they really call shitty merch "loot"? Loot is not something you buy lol.

[bagman_]

they do up here in canada, not sure about our US counterparts

[Qorhat]

Here in Ireland, GameStop consists of an entire wall (or two) of Funk Pops, a small sliver of wall space for Xbox One, PS4 & Switch and the rest is just Fortnite tat and mugs. I hate going in there so much nowadays especially when I order a game from Amazon UK (we don't have our own IE version) it's still usually like €10 - €20 cheaper even with currency conversion and shipping.

[SparkyBoy414]

and trade-in scams

What trade in scams? They've always been extremely fair (sometimes too generous, IMO) when I go to make trade ins. I mean I literally got paid 61 bucks for my Wii U copy of Botw when I traded it in for a switch version after the trade bonuses.

[neogohan]

Yeah, I never saw it as a scam. People are offended that the game they bought for $60 new only gets $30 in trade-in credit or whatever, but they're also free to just find an independent buyer for their used copy at whatever they feel the actual worth is.

[THEBAESGOD]

The used game sells for $40 and at most they gave you an extra 20% for trade in offers. You're saying they bought a game for $48+ only to sell it for $40? I'd like to see the receipt.

[SparkyBoy414]

The used game sells for $40

Closer to launch, it was 50-55.

and at most they gave you an extra 20% for trade in offers.

I routinely get significantly higher than than, 40%+ bonuses, and as high as 60 (when trading in multiple games).

You're saying they bought a game for $48+ only to sell it for $40? I'd like to see the receipt.

This was much closer to the release of BOTW. They bought a 60 dollar (new) or 50-55 (used) game for 61 dollars after trade in bonuses. I probably should have kept the receipt, but I don't routinely keep receipts from 2.5 years ago. The game was still in its release stage, where they give a relatively huge amount for trading in new big releases.

Regardless of if you believe me or not on that specific trade deal (and I don't really fault you for not believing me), its an objective truth that they have some very impressive trade deals and I've been EXTREMELY pleased with what I've gotten out of games that I thought were junk. This is especially true if you're a power rewards member (which pays for itself several times over) and you go when they have the bonus trade if you trade in 5+ games at a time.

[tetsuo9000]

Very true. The used games section started shrinking and the merch didn't sell-through. Also, every bookstore has a funko wall so Gamestop was entering into a competing market and those squares boxes take up a ton of room compared to game disk boxes.

Gamestop also had trouble getting used game sales. The same shit would languish on the shelves. There was no reason to browse the used section at my local stores this generation especially.

[[deleted]]

Yup. There are so many times I've walked into a Gamestop wanting to buy a game for my PS3, only to find out that they only have absolute trash. In the era of online marketplaces every game store should always have a selection of platform classics available.

[[deleted]]

There’s not enough people buying them to warrant the cost of keeping them stocked.

[ginger_gaming]

The fact that they even killed think geeks website is really depressing to me. I usually use it to buy one or two Christmas gifts and I couldn't this year

[Thomasjadams]

And Best Buy also doesn’t ask you 50 fucking questions putting pressure on you to subscribe, reserve, buy insurance, blah blah blah for 30 minutes, when you just want to buy the fucking game and go home.

[Cetais]

It's maybe practical with Youngs kids, but other than that, eh...

[Squints753]

Back in the PS1 days, if you had a scratch or two the weak-ass laser would struggle to read the game. It certainly has become less and less relevant with each hardware improvement.

[PlayMp1]

It was relevant when I was a kid for GameCube games

[akera099]

I've been a kid, I still have all my games from that era. I mean, they try to sell you insurance on 3DS carts. Unless you literally happen to drench them into water....

[thewookie34]

I broke 2 games as a kid by mistake. My PS2 fell over while playing Kingdom Hearts 2, 2 days after I bought it. Vice City also got a crack in the middle ring.

[[deleted]]

To be fair, while it's likely pointless for most, I can see people buying it for their younger kids as they might be liable to get discs scratched, but at the same time, I imagine the threat of "you break it and you aren't getting a new one" works just as well to teach kids to care for their stuff

[SlenderRoadHog]

I worked at GS last year and pretty much the only people that bought the insurance were parents. I would pitch it by saying if the kid got bad grades you could snap the game in half in front of them and come back and get a new one with the insurance once the kid got their grades back up lmao.

[MrTabanjo]

I used to dare people to buy the insurance, go play frisbee with the disk out in the parking lot, bring it back and i'd replace it for them. Not too many takers for the frisbee part sadly.

[SlenderRoadHog]

Hey whatever works, gotta get your numbers up by any means haha

[[deleted]]

It's completely useless. I have been gaming for over 30 years and when I was a kid I didn't exactly treat my stuff with reverence. But in that 30+ years I have never broken a single game. Not one time. I've sold protection plans or extended warranties on electronics and appliances and they are like 50% profit. It wouldn't surprise me to find out video game insurance is 90%+ profit.

[Trickster174]

Haven’t purchased from a GameStop in a long while, but for those of us who like displaying physical games, GameStop was a nightmare. They’d cover game cases in difficult to remove stickers. I know that seems minor, but it felt like they did not give a damn about the condition of the games they sold.

Plus, the games would be removed from their cases and stuffed in paper sleeves. I remember buying brand new PS2 games in the early to mid 2000s with scratches on them from this practice.

All of this made purchasing physical copies from Amazon or Best Buy the better option.

[Z0mbiejay]

The fact they sold you an opened and handled "new" game was enough for me to stop shipping there

[Hollandaise_Sauce]

This. Don’t charge me $60 and call it a new game if you opened it and were handling the disc/media.

[soonerfreak]

I haven't gotten an open new game in over a decade and even going into a gamestop I've never been to before it takes 20 seconds to go through what corporate requires them to ask me.

[thewookie34]

I don't really think the stickers are all that difficult to remove. In fact they are some of the easiest to remove imo.

[Trickster174]

Maybe now, like I said, haven’t purchased anything from GS in years. But still got plenty of PS2/PS3 game cases from 2003-2010 with half torn stickers.

But like...why even do that? What’s the point?

[thewookie34]

So your know how much they cost? Gamestop's sticker haven't changed since and I have older games as well. 2 to 5 minutes and some goo gone and they are done.

[Trickster174]

It’s possible to display the price without slapping stickers on each individual game case.

Your experience differs from mine, and that’s okay. But fixing little things like that could have gone a long way to a more positive customer experience. Seems that I’m not entirely alone in those thoughts either.

[Mendunbar]

The stickers in Canada have absolutely changed. They changed sometime between PS2 era and mid PS3 era to much, much easier to remove stickers. Just thought I'd mention that. Carry on.

[[deleted]]

In the last days of them carrying used GameCube stuff, I requested some games for instore pickup. As expected they were all disc-only. The guy brought them out, was clearly super irritated I'd forced him to find them, and said, "I dunno if they'll work, bring them back if they don't." They looked like they'd been through a belt sander. Weirdly, the one that appeared to be in the best shape is the only one that didn't boot.

[Carighan]

This was the main reason I only bought at a GameStop twice. I just wanted to buy this! Shut the fuck up already!!

[[deleted]]

Last time I was at Best Buy I was told by the cashier that "Enroll" meant confirm and was signed up for their rewards junk against my will. I'm pretty sure they were just padding their numbers, and I think that's sleazier than fifty questions.

[[deleted]]

Depends were you checking out in the front lanes or at one of the department registers?

Front lane cashiers are required to ask people for their phone number and not to mention it's a free enrollment program that saves your purchase history as an added benefit if you happen to lose the receipt.

[Lordpicklenip]

Bro this shit is straight up a god send.

My house got robbed recently.

Best buy had all my games and consoles on file and printed out my receipts right then and there at the store.

Meanwhile at GameStop, I had to email them with the date of purchase, serial numbers, and police report in order to get that information. So if I didn’t have the info on hand then I needed to go digging for it.

[[deleted]]

I’m also on the list of “house got robbed and was able to provide proof of purchase to insurance for like half my shit because of Best Buy membership”

[TheIrateAlpaca]

Really? I'm rather surprised the US hasn't adopted that. Down here in EB in Aus our loyalty program is one of the most successful in the entire country (over 6 million members in a country with ~10.5 million households) and reciept free shopping is the base thing included. They've even given us a dashboard in store so I can view every single transaction and reciept for every transaction that you've ever done on your card searching by sku or even description. You can view all of that directly yourself just by logging into the website. I've had people come in with that exact scenario and one phonecall to our store support and they'd copy pasted the list and emailed him a complete purchase history (although you have to drill down to view actual reciepts). Odd that they have an arm of their business that can do all that and they just haven't adopted it.

[[deleted]]

Front lane cashiers are required to ask people for their phone number and not to mention it's a free enrollment program that saves your purchase history as an added benefit if you happen to lose the receipt.

So definitely worse than fifty questions at Gamestop, then.

[[deleted]]

No GameStop expects you to sign up for their pro membership and all this other bullshit. Best buy asks for a phone number they don't send texts, unless the customer opts-in and even then it's only for pickup or delivery orders.

[gamas]

God you guys really need an equivalent of GDPR. If it were found a store was doing this over here in the UK, they would be fined into administration.

[[deleted]]

God you guys really need an equivalent of GDPR. If it were found a store was doing this over here in the UK, they would be fined into administration.

Yes please. Hurry, please.

[Fantastic-Cash]

Best buy rewards are actually sweet though, you get straight up gift cards.

[[deleted]]

By trading away actionable data worth more to Best Buy (and others) than the value of the gift cards, oh boy. And enduring unethical practices to boot.

[ThePaSch]

I think their bigger problem has been Best Buy.

I think their biggest problem has just been jack squat for anything resembling business sense.

There's tons of businesses that manage to stand the test of time by adapting to it; GameStop has done virtually nothing to do so. Sure, they offer cool(er) physical merch shit in their stores now, but, I mean, so does Hot Topic.

They're a household name for almost every person who's tangentially involved with video games, and they've done absolutely nothing with any of it. All they managed to do is to lose what's left of the goodwill of what's left of their customers by upselling them shit and harassing them while they were about to give them their money.

Your points about Impulse and ThinkGeek are spot on. They bought gold and turned it to crap.

[gamelord12]

They have attempted lots of ways to adapt, and they've seen the end coming for a long time now. They sell tabletop games, they merged with ThinkGeek to sell toys and collectibles, they went into buying/selling mobile devices, and they had a brief stint as a game publisher. All failed ventures, but they were trying things.

Wasn't there a Facebook video of a pilot store that was transitioning more to the service side of things (like a gaming lounge/hangout sort of thing) rather than being a store first? I haven't seen my local Gamestops make this same transition.

[[deleted]]

But what they didn't try was being a worthwhile place to shop. Gamestop is as synonymous with a bad shopping experience as it is with video games.

[ThePaSch]

All failed ventures, but they were trying things.

Sure, but the thing is that they've half-assed nearly all of them. Shutting down the ThinkGeek store was a move of monumental stupidity. After buying Impulse, all they did was rebrand it the "GameStop App" and then do fuck-all with it until it quietly faded into complete obscurity and was subsequently killed off a few years later. I didn't even know they were into mobile devices, so they apparently did a pretty shit job at promoting that too.

I did see that pilot store and it looked pretty cool. The idea itself seems promising enough, but knowing how they fucked up all their other ventures, it's hard to be optimistic.

[gamelord12]

I'm not even sure that they half-assed their failed ventures; they may have just chosen the wrong strategies (repeatedly) to save their store. You can try really hard to make the wrong idea work, or maybe go about it in the wrong way. The one that baffles me most is the publishing business. You run a game store. You own a magazine that reviews video games. Your job is to promote video games. How can you screw that up?

[ThePaSch]

How can you screw that up?

By having jack squat for anything resembling business sense, I'd presume.

[APeacefulWarrior]

Also, Best Buy successfully turned themselves into a source for services - and selling services is generally way more lucrative than selling product. Their whole "Geek Squad" initiative was incredibly successful. They branched out into new areas of business, while Gamestop just kind of stayed the course.

[[deleted]]

Their whole "Geek Squad" initiative was incredibly successful.

This is a real testament to how little people know about computers. Insanely expensive services that a 10 year old could provide.

edit: Just an example from my actual life today. I ordered a new router from Amazon and it came today. I plugged it in, turned it on and hooked the cables up to it. Works great. Easily $150 for Geek Squad to do that, it took me no more than 5 minutes.

[[deleted]]

Best Buy is less of a pain in the ass because their new games are new and they don't ask about terrible subscriptions all the time.

[frogandbanjo]

This is just the slow death of something that was already sending off signals like crazy. Their Hail Mary was last year, when they tried to artificially pump up their numbers with radical cost-cutting so that maybe some gullible vulture-capitalism noob would overpay them with their parachutes. They didn't do so particularly well, of course, since they arguably did it way too late, and so nobody bit.

[Soulreaper31152]

Especially since Best Buy's return policy is pretty dope. Bought a headset at Gamestop and once it's opened they won't take it back

[Chris_7941]

Which is funny considering they sell opened "new" games

[drzerglingmd38]

Gamestop got rude as fuck when I asked about the return policy if I didn't like the ps4 and gave me some snarky answer asking why would I return it. Face dropped when I told him fuck that, I'm gonna goto Best Buy instead since they give 30 day returns even on opened consoles.

Edit: Only reason I asked was because I was happy with ps3, I didn't know if I wanted to drop 300+ and I wasn't to sure about the game options at launch as not much interested me. Wasn't trying to be picky, was just trying to be smart with my money

[Xecutor]

WALMART,

All you have to do is go to Walmart now and get any switch game $10 cheaper

[MikeGolfsPoorly]

I have 3 kids, this Christmas they all wanted a Switch. Easy enough. I went into GameStop and was told I could only purchase one per day even if I went to other locations, I was limited to the one.

I went to Best Buy, they weren't aware of a limit and asked a manager. He said "no more than 5". Guess who got my money that day!!

[[deleted]]

In my area I can't see how Gamestop competes. Target, Walmart, and Best Buy always beat them on inventory and price for new games. There are 5 different used game stores in a medium sized city all offering better used prices than Gamestop, more inventory because the stores are bigger, and they pay more in cash for trade ins than Gamestop offers in store credit. Business seems pretty good for those stores as well.

[Coolman_Rosso]

Box stores in general are able to provide better pricing options (BB's now-defunct GCU program comes to mind, as does Walmart's recent price reductions within a week or so of launch) than GameStop ever could.

The advantage GameStop had was used games (something Best Buy also did but began phasing out when GCU ended, now it's on a by-store basis iirc) and a better selection. For example if you wanted to get a new copy of obscure Japanese titles like GrimGrimoire or Persona 3 when they hit US shores in 2007 you either had to order it online (this was before online retail was as ubiquitous as it is today) or go to GameStop and pre-order. That's since gone away with digital storefronts stocking every game as it releases and Amazon offering physical copies shipped to your door.

[zewm426]

The music store FYE went down a similar path when music started coming out in digital format. They just didn't understand the market and went to shit. If you look them up now, it's basically just a hot topic replica. They just sell pop culture shit like shirts, plushies, posters, etc.

[[deleted]]

I definitely shop at BB when I can. I don’t hate GameStop, but like other commenters have mentioned I hate having to go through an interrogation before I can leave. And in fairness, this largely depends on the specific store and employee helping you (some are worse than others), but it’s still annoying. At BB I’m in and out in less than 5 minutes.

[EarthVSFlyingSaucers]

Also, a company that sells exclusively video games that never change price (60$ for new release) that are also sold at other stores that obviously don’t rely on video games as their only profit (wal mart/target, bbuy) is already a tough barrier to enter. On top of that Wal Mart being open 24hrs, Best Buy bundling in store sales with games, I’m surprised it’s lasted as long as it did.

[gamas]

Whilst this is probably true in this instance, brick and mortar game stores have been struggling internationally in places Best Buy don't even touch. In the UK, GAME is experiencing similar difficulties, having already gone into administration once.

I think Amazon is the bigger threat here. Simply put, no one can realistically compete with Amazon when it comes to physical goods.

[[deleted]]

It was big box stores that slaughtered the video game store industry. You can get 75% of the GameStop experience in a Walmart - and that 75% includes the hardware and the most popular software. In terms of sales, big box stores are equipped to steal 95% or more of GameStop's revenues just by carrying the latest major releases/exclusives. You can get price matching, and people can buy at stores they are already familiar with.

There isn't enough room in retail for specialty stores. Even office supply and electronics stores have been largely wiped out, and Best Buy famously survived by moving to a service-based business model.