Video game retailer GameStop appears to be continuing its ongoing struggle, according to the company's latest financial report. The third quarter of the year brought in a loss of $488.6 million dollars, which in turn caused company stocks to plummet by 13%. Despite what could be considered a record year for the gaming industry, GameStop saw lower than expected sales for major releases, as well as weak performance for pre-owned purchases. Rob Lloyd, chief operating and financial officer, claimed that though Black Friday/Cyber Monday did well to increase sales performance, he has lowered investor expectations for the following holiday season, stating that software sales will not be very high, compared to hardware, likely resulting in further losses during an important season.

While our Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales were strong, we anticipate that our fourth quarter sales will skew more towards hardware than initially planned which, along with underperformance of certain titles, weakness in pre-owned and recent sales promotions, will result in fourth quarter earnings that are below our previous expectations,

Source

 

[SkittleDash]

...Why do I have the urge to laugh at this? I don't have a GameStop from where I'm from but I've only heard terrible things about GameStop.

 

[BORTZ]

Yikes. I mean we all knew this kinda thing was coming. If you have been to their stores in the last few years you have seen them move into a merch kinda place too, but nothing too impressive.

 

[Sledgehogg]

Ahhh gamestop. The place where I got my DS Lite with three games and a case for around 110$. New Super Mario Bros, Lego Star Wars The Complete Saga, and the worst game i've ever owned: My Sims Sky Heroes.

 

[enigma85]

Maybe they should have better prices/sales and give more for the stuff you turn in. When you get a couple bucks of store credit for a game they turn around and sell for 10 times the amount they gave you it's BS.

This is the Toys 'r' us of game stores.

 

[ThoD]

I second Skittle's post, laughable indeed Seriously, GameStop is a ripoff in general and since most games nowadays that you buy physical expect you to download the game anyway or like 50-100GBs on top of the disks, there is literally no benefit to physical games compared to digital ones anymore for more than a handful of exceptions (eg: Ninty's cartridges having pretty much the full game playable as is without needing annoying downloads just to play). GS has just stayed way behind the times, would be interesting to see them shut-down soon...

 

[Nomi20]

...Why do I have the urge to laugh at this? I don't have a GameStop from where I'm from but I've only heard terrible things about GameStop.

Everyone at mine is really nice. So it's a bit sad to see them struggle.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

I second Skittle's post, laughable indeed Seriously, GameStop is a ripoff in general and since most games nowadays that you buy physical expect you to download the game anyway or like 50-100GBs on top of the disks, there is literally no benefit to physical games compared to digital ones anymore for more than a handful of exceptions (eg: Ninty's cartridges having pretty much the full game playable as is without needing annoying downloads just to play). GS has just stayed way behind the times, would be interesting to see them shut-down soon...

If I had to download smash my internet would suffer. The only reason physical is still nice is for people (like me) who still have really bad internet

 

[The Catboy]

Best Gamestop can do is offer 10$ in cash to pay for the stores or 15$ in in-store credit

 

[K3Nv2]

Hope no one has stock shares in gamestop

 

[SG854]

GameStop will go bankrupt and games will be 90% off

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

Maybe they should have better prices/sales and give more for the stuff you turn in. When you get a couple bucks of store credit for a game they turn around and sell for 10 times the amount they gave you it's BS.

This is the Toys 'r' us of game stores.

It's BS, but that's literally how Gamestop makes (or used to, at this point I guess) all their profit. Game stores make virtually nothing on brand new game sales, it's why you never see small mom and pop game shops that deal solely in brand new video games. They have to fuck you with your shitty trade in prices to even remotely stay afloat, otherwise they might as well just close up shop.

Some journalists went investigating on why indie game shops were dying out, and found that the average wholesale price of a $60 game is ~$55, meaning a shop would make a whopping $5 off of every $60 game they sell. Which doesn't sound too bad, until you consider how quickly new games end up going on sale after their release, and if you don't sell every copy of that game for $60 before it goes on sale you end up getting fucked. Gamestop might buy 100 copies of the new Call of Duty for $55 a pop from Activision, sell half those for $60 in the first few weeks, and then have to drop the price down to $50 or $45 and start bleeding $10-$15 on every sale so they can try and stay remotely competitive vs other shops.

So what do they do then? They turn to dealing in used games, and fucking over people with low value trade ins to even remotely make any kind of profit. Gamestop is the worst offender in terms of fucking you over with trade-ins for sure, but it's literally the only way to pay the bills. I don't see how asking a company that's already bleeding money on half their merchandise to bleed some more is somehow going to help.

It's shitty, but it's basically fuck you over, or go bankrupt.

 

[CallmeBerto]

I wonder how well digital purchases did this year and how much of an effect that has had on them?

 

[leon315]

AMAZON RULEZ! GS sucks! wonder how long before GS ceases the last breath?

I heard didn't some investors recently bought GS's mobile phone provider service for 100million dollars??

 

[ThoD]

If I had to download smash my internet would suffer. The only reason physical is still nice is for people (like me) who still have really bad internet

Pretty sure I said Ninty is an exception since the retail versions have the game playable as is while only (sometimes) needing a relatively small patch should there be a need for one... I know what you mean, I hardly ever get more than 200KB/s down, but for PS4 games especially you can buy physical disks of games and will still need to download another 20-100GBs on top, same on XBox but slightly better.

 

[SG854]

It's BS, but that's literally how Gamestop makes (or used to, at this point I guess) all their profit. Game stores make virtually nothing on brand new game sales, it's why you never see small mom and pop game shops that deal solely in brand new video games. They have to fuck you with your shitty trade in prices to even remotely stay afloat, otherwise they might as well just close up shop.

Some journalists went investigating on why indie game shops were dying out, and found that the average wholesale price of a $60 game is ~$55, meaning a shop would make a whopping $5 off of every $60 game they sell. Which doesn't sound too bad, until you consider how quickly new games end up going on sale after their release, and if you don't sell every copy of that game for $60 before it goes on sale you end up getting fucked. Gamestop might buy 100 copies of the new Call of Duty for $55 a pop from Activision, sell half those for $60 in the first few weeks, and then have to drop the price down to $50 or $45 and start bleeding $10-$15 on every sale so they can try and stay remotely competitive vs other shops.

So what do they do then? They turn to dealing in used games, and fucking over people with low value trade ins to even remotely make any kind of profit. Gamestop is the worst offender in terms of fucking you over with trade-ins for sure, but it's literally the only way to pay the bills. I don't see how asking a company that's already bleeding money on half their merchandise to bleed some more is somehow going to help.

It's shitty, but it's basically fuck you over, or go bankrupt.

It's BS, but that's literally how Gamestop makes (or used to, at this point I guess) all their profit. Game stores make virtually nothing on brand new game sales, it's why you never see small mom and pop game shops that deal solely in brand new video games. They have to fuck you with your shitty trade in prices to even remotely stay afloat, otherwise they might as well just close up shop.

Some journalists went investigating on why indie game shops were dying out, and found that the average wholesale price of a $60 game is ~$55, meaning a shop would make a whopping $5 off of every $60 game they sell. Which doesn't sound too bad, until you consider how quickly new games end up going on sale after their release, and if you don't sell every copy of that game for $60 before it goes on sale you end up getting fucked. Gamestop might buy 100 copies of the new Call of Duty for $55 a pop from Activision, sell half those for $60 in the first few weeks, and then have to drop the price down to $50 or $45 and start bleeding $10-$15 on every sale so they can try and stay remotely competitive vs other shops.

So what do they do then? They turn to dealing in used games, and fucking over people with low value trade ins to even remotely make any kind of profit. Gamestop is the worst offender in terms of fucking you over with trade-ins for sure, but it's literally the only way to pay the bills. I don't see how asking a company that's already bleeding money on half their merchandise to bleed some more is somehow going to help.

It's shitty, but it's basically fuck you over, or go bankrupt.

Just wait for the $15 Dollar Minimum wage to kicks in.

And the 5 dollars is revenue not profit. Did you calculate operation costs? They probably make less then 3 cents in profit for every game sold.

I calculated profits for Walmart and only 2% of the billions they make is actual profit. The rest 98% goes to running the business.

Digital is probably the way to got for companies because less money on production and shipping costs and more in profit.

 

[grossaffe]

AMAZON RULEZ! GS sucks! wonder how long before GS ceases the last breath?

I heard didn't some investors recently bought GS's mobile phone provider service for 100million dollars??

Fuck amazon and their "now that we've put best buy game club out of business, we're dropping our discount on pre-orders even though you just paid for your year of prime... which we increased the price of by $20". I'll probably be taking my new-game purchases to Starland.

 

[Rabbid4240]

GameStop looked me right in the eye and said my ds was worth 18 bucks. You could give GameStop the cure to cancer and they'd offer $3.89

 

[johnboyjr]

It's BS, but that's literally how Gamestop makes (or used to, at this point I guess) all their profit. Game stores make virtually nothing on brand new game sales, it's why you never see small mom and pop game shops that deal solely in brand new video games. They have to fuck you with your shitty trade in prices to even remotely stay afloat, otherwise they might as well just close up shop.

Some journalists went investigating on why indie game shops were dying out, and found that the average wholesale price of a $60 game is ~$55, meaning a shop would make a whopping $5 off of every $60 game they sell. Which doesn't sound too bad, until you consider how quickly new games end up going on sale after their release, and if you don't sell every copy of that game for $60 before it goes on sale you end up getting fucked. Gamestop might buy 100 copies of the new Call of Duty for $55 a pop from Activision, sell half those for $60 in the first few weeks, and then have to drop the price down to $50 or $45 and start bleeding $10-$15 on every sale so they can try and stay remotely competitive vs other shops.

So what do they do then? They turn to dealing in used games, and fucking over people with low value trade ins to even remotely make any kind of profit. Gamestop is the worst offender in terms of fucking you over with trade-ins for sure, but it's literally the only way to pay the bills. I don't see how asking a company that's already bleeding money on half their merchandise to bleed some more is somehow going to help.

It's shitty, but it's basically fuck you over, or go bankrupt.

Gamestop does not buy games like mom and pop shops. They don't pay the $55 up front they pay when the game sells. Otherwise they would never put games at a cheaper price

https://www.reddit.com/r/GameStop/comments/990v3z/when_gamestop_has_a_big_sale_on_a_new_game_are/

 

[nikeymikey]

We dont have GS in the UK but we have a compnay called GAME that are just as shit when it comes to trade ins. Its a shames cos when i was a kid it was always the indie shops that were the best value. Also they sold imports amongst other things which of course the big chains are not allowed to do.

I miss the days of getting the latest SNES cart for my US SNES months before my PAL console owning school friends

 

[Mystic Shadow]

Maybe if the latest games weren't trash they would make more money. I don't preorder anymore I wait for reviews. Like fallout 76 I doged a nice bullet there.