WSJ: GameStop Is Running Out of Lives

ShadowHearth

I honestly don't understand people who want to see gamestop die. Really? It's like choosing down the branch you sit on with chainsaw.
If you don't want or like buying in there, fair enough. There are a few other places left to buy. Not much if you talking block and mortar shops. Even of you don't buy anything from them it's in your own interest to have gamestop around.
People forget about competition. If gamestop cranks up prices, then other retailers undercut them. We all know how awesome it turned out for gamers when Game closed down. Less competition ment "**** you, that's why, wheres my 75eu for game".
Just because gamestop prices are like this, we are able to buy fallout 4 in argos for 56eu.

BlitzKrieg

Cormac... wrote: »

Why not Pre-Load, but pay to unlock the actual game at launch?

Win-Win!

I imagine there is some fear of being able to reverse engineer a preload to create a hack of some sort.

But with steam's refund policy you should be able to return a pre-ordered game without issue right?

Though I always wonder how offers like get a free copy of X if you pre-order would work in redeeming factor?

BlitzKrieg

ShadowHearth wrote: »

I honestly don't understand people who want to see gamestop die. Really? It's like choosing down the branch you sit on with chainsaw.
If you don't want or like buying in there, fair enough. There are a few other places left to buy. Not much if you talking block and mortar shops.

exclusively video games, yeah not much, but there's not much that does exclusively any entertainment media these days. I mean I think you could say only comic book stores hold that and thats because they lack competition (and also they dont debatably sell exclusively comics)

Even of you don't buy anything from them it's in your own interest to have gamestop around.

Nope, Gamestop encourage the cutting up of game content to push as store exclusive content. I rather be rid of that sort of crap

People forget about competition. If gamestop cranks up prices, then other retailers undercut them. We all know how awesome it turned out for gamers when Game closed down. Less competition ment "**** you, that's why, wheres my 75eu for game".

People oversell competition as this simple more = better. Competition comes in many forms and gamestop dont give benefits from their competition. They dont push the prices down because they focus on the discount being in 2nd hand games so cheap new titles would work against them, they rely on a small portion of the player base to fund discounts for the larger player base. They also because they rely on large stock of second hand games tend to carry less variety of their titles, instead opting for shelves stocked with the same title over multiple different titles so they dont offer better options for purchasing.

The advantage gamestop gave was exposure, they allowed video games to grow at a ridiculous rate in the late 90s early 00's by using 2nd hand sales to lower their costs down allowing them to be in every shopping centre and every high street. But that's hit it's ceiling and for the industry they've gone from a boon to a potential wound and they are being pushed out.

Competition can come in many forms and not all of it is good. Oligopoly is the much more common one now...or Cartels which is what Sony and Microsoft pretty much have going right now, they wont directly compete in prices instead its all about release dates and exclusive content in 3rd party games.
which sucks for gamers cause all it does is cut up content for us. Sometimes it is good, getting something for free but mostly its denying you something cause you bought the wrong console even though you can still buy the game.

Just because gamestop prices are like this, we are able to buy fallout 4 in argos for 56eu.

Argos compete with tesco and the other large stores not gamestop. They are who push argos down and they also have the same issue as gamestop with limited selection of titles.

BlitzKrieg

BlitzKrieg wrote: »

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Argos compete with tesco and the other large stores not gamestop. They are who push argos down and they also have the same issue as gamestop with limited selection of titles.

That used to be the case for sure.

But now having a look at these might muddy those waters some what, would like to see that being brought into stores here.

http://www.argos.ie/static/StaticDisplay/includeName/trade_in_old_video_games.htm

http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Browse/ID72/33650162/c_1/1%7Ccategory_root%7CTechnology%7C33006169/c_2/2%7C33006169%7CVideo+games+and+consoles%7C33008137/c_3/3%7Ccat_33008137%7CPre-order+games%7C33650162.htm

Not sure if that is anything more than testing of waters on the part of Argos UK ?

Calhoun

Wouldn't be a bad thing to see them lose market share even if it lets them rethink their current pricing strategy and aggressive sales techniques . 75 euro a new game title is what you get with limited competition and at that the new 2nd hand games are not much cheaper. I've also seen some pretty shady selling in my local stores when it comes to upselling.

Focus on decent customer service and decent pricing and I think they will be here to stay but remains,to be seen if they can do that.

BlitzKrieg

Deleted User wrote: »

That used to be the case for sure.

But now having a look at these might muddy those waters some what, would like to see that being brought into stores here.

http://www.argos.ie/static/StaticDisplay/includeName/trade_in_old_video_games.htm

http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Browse/ID72/33650162/c_1/1%7Ccategory_root%7CTechnology%7C33006169/c_2/2%7C33006169%7CVideo+games+and+consoles%7C33008137/c_3/3%7Ccat_33008137%7CPre-order+games%7C33650162.htm

Not sure if that is anything more than testing of waters on the part of Argos UK ?

yeah trade ins is a wider sympton of the genius/idiotic success/mistake of the games industry in the mid 90s to early 2000s. It's not an exclusive to Gamestop or game shops anymore.

You can trade in at HMV UK aswell (what few shops remain) as well and most best buys walmarts etc in the US offer trade ins on video games

Robert ninja

BlitzKrieg wrote: »

I imagine there is some fear of being able to reverse engineer a preload to create a hack of some sort.

But with steam's refund policy you should be able to return a pre-ordered game without issue right?

Though I always wonder how offers like get a free copy of X if you pre-order would work in redeeming factor?

There's also server costs to consider. Every Tom Dick and Harry is going to pre-load a game just because there's big green PRE-LOAD button to click.

I guess they could limit the feature to people over a certain steam level who have perhaps a certain amount of game purchases or are otherwise considered trust-worthy.

Or even just make a pre-load cost like €0.10. Most people have that in their steam wallet and would weed out the amount of people that just download things because they're free. When you do purchase it, the €0.10 can be considered already payed for so that's taken off it.

Maybe limit it to X amount of pre-loads at a time or per week/month/year.

There's really all kinds of solutions and there's probably a good way to make it work in there somewhere. Valve have a lot of staff doing R&D I'm sure they could come up with something. They do have a beta client opt-in to test the waters, too.

As for the actual data being on people's computers and possibly being abused... Just encrypt it in a compressed format. Upon purchase it's decrypted and uncompressed.

Solitaire

Penn wrote: »

I agree going digital-only would absolutely be best for the console companies.

...seems to be the consensus here. And you would be right if you lived in a world where rank idiocy and unrestrained greed didn't result in hilariously bad decisions that had predictably interesting outcomes :rolleyes:

Sorny and Microshaft are convinced that if they destroy X Y and Z they can achieve an industry-wide monopoly (well, technically a duopoly) without any form of opposition or catastrophic legal backlash. And they're already treating their customers as if they had said monopoly. But the fact that no-one owns so much as rents a modern Sony/MS console has put an awful lot of people off. Having a huge up-front platform cost and then having to rent the online-based services only to be able to digitally download games at a premium compared to any on- or off-line retailer (other than GameStop - ggwp there lads!) is ironically pushing a lot of gamers and families back toward PC (and Nintendo to some degree) as it ends up a lot cheaper in the long or even medium-term.

Sony and MS are relying on the inertia and myopia of the proverbial sheeple for their plans to succeed, yet if they managed to destroy retail game sales overnight they'd force a lot of the less affluent sheeple to declare their households game-free or jump ship to other platforms both established (PC, Nintendo) and emerging (Android). Those platforms would then see greatly increased backing from the big scumpanies, many of whom have already overplayed the same game Sony/MS seem fated to mess up and ended up with their own digital marketplaces failing as a result. These big boys may love dealing with Sony and MS to maximise power and profit while screwing the sheeple, but the idea of creating a duopoly that allows the pair - companies that EA and the like often consider their inferiors - to collectively hold an almighty gun to their heads is a waking nightmare to them and will happily bankroll other platforms to create just enough competition that allows them to maintain some of their power and independence.

Shiminay wrote: »

Unpopular opinion but none the less true - if you live somewhere with shite internet access, it's up to you to fix it. You should be burning down the offices of all your local Fianna Fáil and Green Party TD's with what they allowed to be signed off in the creation of the so called National Broadband Scheme.

If I burned down their offices, I would be declared a terrorist and hunted down and killed for challenging the Powers That Be. What it would not do is give me or anyone else in my situation a broadband connection that costs me less than €50 a month for an unreliable connection throttled to 3Mbps. Nor would any amount of talking to them. They do what the Powers That Be tell them to do, and giving the serfs a communications infrastructure is not on the list

Blaming the culchies for not breaking out the burning pitchforks fast enough and offloading all the blame for the mess the country is in on us in order to excuse the scummers sitting in the Dail making this mess and allow you to wallow in your inertia? Would it be discriminatory for me to suggest that the above is a classic townie attitude that is doing even less to fix our infrastructural issues than torching the constituency offices?

I agree that Ireland on its own won't hold up global-scale economic change thanks to our own laughable infrastructure issues. We're tiny - the tip of a very large iceberg. Lots of emerging markets with significant buying power also have terrible comms infrastructure and a thriving retail and online game market. And many larger nations such as the US have been corrupted into cutting up every region into little fiefdoms where ISP xyz has their own monopoly, and this is starting to have a slow, creeping and ultimately severe effect on the overall quality of internet connections as there is less and less investment in infrastructure and more and more Working Joes unable to afford modern fibre-based connections due to the monopolies.

Robert ninja wrote: »

I guess they could limit the feature to people over a certain steam level who have perhaps a certain amount of game purchases or are otherwise considered trust-worthy.

I am a trustworthy gamer.
I am a big fan and supporter of Steam.
I have hundreds of games in my Library all bought and paid for.
I have the Steam Level of a goldfish.
Why? Because I don't buy 1434213 games in every sale and consider their strange, labyrinthine and pointless collectable card games partly based on buying said number of games in said sales as marginally less fun than smashing a hole clean through my main monitor by repeatedly smashing my head face-first into it.

BlitzKrieg

Sorny and Microshaft are convinced that if they destroy X Y and Z they can achieve an industry-wide monopoly (well, technically a duopoly)

Oligopoly would be the more accurate title: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligopoly

Solitaire

It would if they intended on being charitable and permitted Nintendo and Valve to survive in some form.

...given their corporate behaviour, I think we can bet on it being a duopoly :pac: In their dreams at least. Ones that really don't have any real bearing upon reality.

Robert ninja

Solitaire wrote: »

I have hundreds of games in my Library all bought and paid for.

Pretty sure that falls under the, "or are otherwise considered trust-worthy". Activity that makes you inconspicious, not throw up any red flags on the account when consideirng it for pre-load support.