GAME - Gamestation, about to fold?

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lewism said:
If anything the really need to take a long, hard look at Games Workshop and try and emulate that. When was the last time your local game had a tournament or anything that involved you staying in the store more than 5 minutes?
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Well GW is in serious trouble as well, they're also not managing things very intelligently. The board is an old mates club and they are making so many poor decisions.

But yes, Game could take a leaf out of their book of customer engagement and making the stores more interesting places to be. Probably far too late for that now though.

Computer Exchange used to have that hang out vibe, with all the imported Japanese consoles that you could play on. But that's just turned into a stolen mobile phone shop more than anything else now.
 
avec said:
Well GW is in serious trouble as well, they're also not managing things very intelligently. The board is an old mates club and they are making so many poor decisions.

But yes, Game could take a leaf out of their book of customer engagement and making the stores more interesting places to be. Probably far too late for that now though.

Computer Exchange used to have that hang out vibe, with all the imported Japanese consoles that you could play on. But that's just turned into a stolen mobile phone shop more than anything else now.
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Totally agree with that mate, whenever I go into a cex there is either a tramp or a junkie selling something that looks stolen expecting the earth for it aswell!
 
lewism said:
I miss the days of Electronics Boutique. A fine retailer. The local store was filled with friendly, knowledgable and pleasant staff who were always happy to have 2 minutes to go over games and accessories. They also stacked a fine collection of magazines (another thing that's unfortunatley been eroded thanks to the internet) and the manager wouldn't mind knocking down the price to compete with other offers or the early internet offers. Could you imagine the students in Game doing any of that?

Some staff are OK but really in this day and age they have to be amazing to keep regulars. Parents don't care about any of the above. They want the game as cheap as possible for thier kids. Children want the games as soon as possible. It's the inbetweeners that should be the bread and butter of Game and the like.

If anything the really need to take a long, hard look at Games Workshop and try and emulate that. When was the last time your local game had a tournament or anything that involved you staying in the store more than 5 minutes?
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Game, as it is today, is actually Electronics Boutique UK

(I think it still trades as EB Games worldwide)

EB brought out Future Zone as a way into the UK market.

(Used to love Future Zone!)

After Christmas '99 (I think it was) EB brought out GAME and kept

the name as to sever ties with it's US parent company.

So GAME has a massive parent company to bail it out,

that said large store closures are on the cards IMO.
 
Emlyn_Dewar said:
The only bad thing about Game shutting for good would be the job losses that'd go along with it.
There's very little good to say about the place.
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And we could well be talking thousands!!!!

Hate Game all you want but a company of that size going under is very bad for our economy. As I said in my first post this could well be the start of an avalanche.

Personally I would be surprised if high street shops exist in 5-10 years time.
 
Our game is busy a lot of the time, queues at the tills on weekends and lunch times.

Think this is generally due to location though, as the next closest game is about 1 hour away.

Staff are mostly friendly and gamers, but this doesn't seem the norm, after reading this thread
 
Dsteviedee said:
Game, as it is today, is actually Electronics Boutique UK

(I think it still trades as EB Games worldwide)

EB brought out Future Zone as a way into the UK market.

(Used to love Future Zone!)

After Christmas '99 (I think it was) EB brought out GAME and kept

the name as to sever ties with it's US parent company.

So GAME has a massive parent company to bail it out,

that said large store closures are on the cards IMO.
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It's not quite as clear cut as that.

When the EB and Game merger took place, it did so as to make the UK operation a separate entity from the US business, with the caveat that the US operation retained a 24% stake in the UK business and a 1% royalty of fees.

The last of the royalty fees was paid in 2006 when it was agreed to settle it after years of the UK business trying to have the fees stopped in court.

As far as I'm aware, EB still has that 24%, but that's not a majority share by any means, and certainly doesn't mean they are there to bail them out.

The other fact is that EB Games was bought out by Gamestop who have stores in Ireland and are rumoured to possibly be considering a move into the UK market.
 
Edz said:
And we could well be talking thousands!!!!

Hate Game all you want but a company of that size going under is very bad for our economy. As I said in my first post this could well be the start of an avalanche.

Personally I would be surprised if high street shops exist in 5-10 years time.
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high street shops will always exist, as some things are not worth buying online due to postage and delivery times.

take clothing for example, if you buy online, you cannot try it on, to see how it looks in person (pictures can vary hugely to the real product) and to see how it fits. returning items can be a pain, etc.

i do think though that a great number of places will become extinct.

specialist stores being the main ones, like comet, currys, pc world, game, gamestation, borders, waterstones, hmv, richer sounds.

they cannot compete with supermarkets and amazon, ebay, etc. supermarkets are going to get bigger and swallow up a lot of these places but some will exist.

the biggest killer is rent, rates and energy prices along with wages. all of which are too high. there should be no minimum wage, business's shouldn't be charged rates there is no reason for them and energy prices need to be put back to decent prices.

small business's are finding it impossible to operate, in Paisley town centre over half of the shops have shut down in the past 10 years and never been re-opened. all of them are still available to buy/rent.

this is what all these high running costs are doing to business in this country, in the future there will be no small businesses at all. but popular high street chains will still exist, such as primark, john lewis, etc.
 
I haven't been a regular shopper in any high street game store for years. Always online and over the last year or two for PC at least I will buy a lot of games from Steam. I occasionally buy a second hand game on the high street if I want to buy something on impulse as second hand prices for older games aren't too bad, but that's it really.

In Reading there used to be three GAMEs within close proximity to each other, a Gamestation, 2 HMVs (why so many I'll never know) and one indie (still there last time I looked). However within the last 6 months or so one of the HMVs closed down and the Gamestation a few months ago moved closing it's current location and taking up the space of one of the GAME stores (it's original store was tiny so was well needed). A CEX has recently opened up as well but I've not ventured in yet. So in Reading game retailers are still rife, but as I said a few stores have closed down.
 
I only use the highstreet for two things, clothes and food. Everything else I buy online. I may go to stores to look at stuff like Home Cinema etc but then go home and get a cheaper price online pretty much every time.

I buy all my games and movies online and have done for a long time. The only exception to this is when I buy a game on release, I dont trust online retailers or the postman to get my delivery to me on release day, Id rather get up early and buy it from a local store after phoning the day before to check stock and reserve a copy if I can. Considering games are released on fridays, I also dont trust saturday post, so speaking from previous experience my preorder may be posted the day before release but not turn up until monday. No thanks.

Then of course we have Steam, good old digital distribution, nuff said.

A Gamestation near me recently got boarded up and reopened up as a GAME. I dont hold much hope for the future of these stores, they just cant compete anymore with the internet and never will due to the internets accessabilty and variety. Look at Virgin, that turned to Zavvi and then disappeared, now all we have is HMV.

I went into an HMV recently and left empty handed as I was disgusted with the price of some items. I was after a DVD that was £3 online with free delivery, it was only because the better half wanted to go shopping for the day that I ventured into HMV and the same DVD was £12!!! Ridiculous.
 
I now officially loathe GAME. I used to use them regularly as i would go in mainly to browse their used section and almost always come out with a cheap game. Now though my local stores seem to have halved their used game sections and now there's bugger all and if you do find something worth buying, its generally only 3-5 quid cheaper than buying new.

More recently they have been getting worse, Resistance 3 came out at 39.99, they were selling used copies at £34.99 but then you had to spend £7 on the online pass making it more expensive than a new copy. Then there was the whole Dead Island price fixing malarkey which really made me lose respect for them.

I actually bought Skyrim from them on release day as i has been given a gift card so thought i would use that, within seconds of me stepping in the store some chimp was asking if i needed assistance which I really hate, leave me alone at least until I've actually made it through your doorway! I queued for ages as it was quite busy, and ended up being served by the store manager who then proceeded to try and sell me a bunch of tat to go along with my new game. No thanks, you can keep your tshirts and keyrings i just want the game. This wasn't the correct answer apparantly, I now HAD to buy the strategy guide. He must have spent 5 minutes trying to convince me how i couldn't possibly play the game without it, but eventually I managed to pay my money and take the game. Still he tried one last time to sell me it, I said no for the 15th time and he said "you'll be back" giving me a smug look. I just said "never again" and walked out.

What makes it even worse for my local GAME, is that there is a Smiths toy shop 30 seconds away who have a larger selection of games at cheaper prices, they give better trade in prices and the staff will treat you like a mate rather than a walking wallet. All my friends either go there or the supermarket now, cheaper for everything.
 
Bennie-Mac said:
I actually bought Skyrim from them on release day as i has been given a gift card so thought i would use that, within seconds of me stepping in the store some chimp was asking if i needed assistance which I really hate, leave me alone at least until I've actually made it through your doorway! I queued for ages as it was quite busy, and ended up being served by the store manager who then proceeded to try and sell me a bunch of tat to go along with my new game. No thanks, you can keep your tshirts and keyrings i just want the game. This wasn't the correct answer apparantly, I now HAD to buy the strategy guide. He must have spent 5 minutes trying to convince me how i couldn't possibly play the game without it, but eventually I managed to pay my money and take the game. Still he tried one last time to sell me it, I said no for the 15th time and he said "you'll be back" giving me a smug look. I just said "never again" and walked out.
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You have more patience than me! I'd have just left.lol
I understand offering help and advise but that kind of selling technique is more akin to somewhere like the market in Cairo!
In fact, a couple of 'no thank you's' to them and they tend to leave you alone!

For particularly old games you should try the local market or charity shops.
My mate goes to our townsm arket as the guy sells used games but knows nothing about them. He got 8 games for 50p...total! And i'm talking large box PC games etc. Red Alert 1 and 2 were included in that.



Last time I went into Game about 7 or 8 years ago they were still quite good. Picked up Makai Kingdom for PS2 at a good price.

Our local games store, Grainger Games employs the most depressed looking kids i've ever seen. They all look so young, know nothing about games and struggle to perform the most simple tasks.
Last time I went in it was 15 minutes before closing and they decided to count the money even though I was the last person there. Took them 10 minutes..as the girl was showing the new guy how to do it (yeah..because it's a complex task) and he kept getting mixed up, then she made a mess of it herself.
They were lucky I couldn't go anywhere else really. I was so annoyed :mad:
Idiots!

At least their used prices are generally fair though. Normally like £10 less than new and they have pleenty 2 year old games for £5-£8. Rarely use it as I pay for everything with Amazon vouchers I get but it's still a lot better than Game
 
blitzwing85 said:
Our local games store, Grainger Games employs the most depressed looking kids i've ever seen. They all look so young, know nothing about games and struggle to perform the most simple tasks.
Last time I went in it was 15 minutes before closing and they decided to count the money even though I was the last person there. Took them 10 minutes..as the girl was showing the new guy how to do it (yeah..because it's a complex task) and he kept getting mixed up, then she made a mess of it herself.
They were lucky I couldn't go anywhere else really. I was so annoyed :mad:
Idiots!

At least their used prices are generally fair though. Normally like £10 less than new and they have pleenty 2 year old games for £5-£8. Rarely use it as I pay for everything with Amazon vouchers I get but it's still a lot better than Game
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I'd never heard of Grainger Games until recently, presumably because they don't have any stores in the South. Even if they did, this report and various tweets I saw at the time is enough to make me never want to shop there. Infact this article now comes up as the second google hit underneath the company when you search for them!

http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2011/10/ho...r-committed-suicide-at-a-gaming-awards-event/
 
Regarding the comments about 'over helpful staff' and some staff not knowing there stuff -
GAME's higher management push for thier staff to approach customers and as I remember we used to have a poster out back when I used to work in my local store reminding us to approach customers within 1 minute of them entering the store, stupid I know but thems was the rules!. I personally never liked or agreed with the hard sell approach a simple 'no thanks' was enough for me this in itself landed me in trouble a few times with managers asking things like 'why didn't you push strategy guides' or 'why didn't you sign that person up for a loyalty card' but I found that trying to be polite and generally helpful worked for me and the customers.

As for staff not knowing things this was not always the case - I joined the company beacuse of my interest in games (this was just when EB had changed to Game) and my interveiw consisted of a lot of Games related questions that gave the manager an idea of how much I knew about games, now I dont pretend to know everything but I have a fairly good knowledge of games and when I was given the job the guys I worked with all loved games and we were all fairly clued up. We all seemed to share the notion too that the hard sell approach was not the way to go however as the company grew in both size and greed we found the type of people working in the stores changing, instead of the freindly knowlagable sales assistant we saw increasingly people who had no idea what they were talking about hired on the basis that that they 'had a ps2 and played pro evo at the weekend' some of these people also tended to be a** lickers and frequently screwed others over in order to get ahead.

At that point I left GAME after many arguements with managment about how they did things I was sad to leave but knew it was for the best however I still know 3 of those guys and they have managed to work their way up to store manager, whenever I speak to them they tell me how the company has changed, I really hope for their sake that GAME can see past the bottom line for once and start to change the way they work.
 
Scrutinize said:
This leaves online only which is great apart from the fact you can't do trade-ins.
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Trade ins will be a thing of the past soon enough, its already happened on the PCs and consoles are moving to the same system...it will be much more restrictive in the next gen.

Havent got a problem with it myself, you buy a game and you shouldnt be able to trade it in or get it second hand. the publisher gets zero of that and its a pointless system as it doesnt help growth in the actual games industry at all.
 
The store pricing maybe a joke to most, but the pricing works as its for those people who really can not be bother to shop about and just want to get it there and then.

I find that the London stores are always pretty busy then maybe it's the distribution of wealth is better here. Don't forget Game business model is to really make their money from the preowned market where they pay little for a game then sell it for more.
 
Hence why they price new games at £45+ and then try their hardest to flog you the pre-owned version at £37(old new price).
 
Somewhat off topic – but keeping along the lines of buying used. I’ve only recently re-discovered CEX and it’s like a god-send for someone who has missed a lot of AAA titles. If you are one of the ones who MUST buy games on release, the day before they are released… all of them – then this doesn’t apply, but I can’t believe all the awesome titles that can be found around a fiver!

Their in-store trade in price (cash price for games is lower) is rather reasonable and you are seldom worse off compared to selling it here on the MM (if you consider postage and so forth). So if you can cope with the ***** scum of the earth types that hang out there, or the uber-geek types, I’d suggest swinging past your local cex shop!
 
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