game in serious trouble?
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Soldato
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Expect a prepack administration deal to take place. The good stores will be sold on to a new holding firm free from debt while the poor performing ones will be left to the creditors. Its a practise that really should not be allowed as it means the business can easily leave a worthless business to the debtors while the new company/directors keep all the profitable sides.
Big news and this isn't always on the front page.
I ahve little sympathy for the creditors, that's the risk you take dealing with a Ltd company.
Pre pack deals are good as jobs are kept and there is more incentive for companies who take on the liability to keep stores going.
Jsut wait a few days and you can buy 4 crappy games.
3 copies of Fifa 10 and 1 copy of Fifa 9 is the current front runner.
3 games and a gamestation in newcastles city centre... (the games all within a few minutes of each other in the same shopping centre)
It's not dead as there is still a huge demand (at least until consoles move away).
The reason the have failed is Price and bad management.
They have too many stores in expensive locations (in the same towns), there is loads of competition that undercuts them and they don't carry every game, unlike Amazon.
Selling physical media is still going strong and will continue for a good few years yet. DLC is not the reason, most of there sales are for Consoles which haven't caught up yet. Hence why they sell few PC games.
TBH it is a failed business model but I think its more a case of buying/trading used games caught up with them like it has every small retailer eventually. Its all fine to tell people that games like FIFA 07 and Smackdown Vs Raw 08 only have 50p trade value but that's 50p profit you lose on the sale of the game their trading against and you never get it back as nobody wants the game.
Flash forward 15 years and they have millions of pounds worth of pre-owned games on the books that are literally worthless. I went to the local GAME last week to checkout the closing down sale (we all knew they weren't coming back form this) and they had un-boxed PS2 games and boxed HD-DVD's for 49p, pre-owned PS2/3 from £1-2, and loads more, and not one single game was worth that much money, they were all garbage that they had paid (through discount) for.
That isn't really the problem, the problem is you can go to pretty much any online store and buy the same games for much less money. I would rather wait a day or two for delivery than shell out £15 more
![[TW]Fox](/data/man-of-honor/2009.png){kind=avatar}
It's not a dead business model, something like 70% of games are still sold as packaged media.
What is dead however is the concept of saturating a town with numerous branches of the same store. This worked when there was lots of competition but now there isn't it Just adds cost pressures.
Oh and ubersonic, the margins on preowned are huge, far bigger than new games.
Own brand accessories and preowned is where the big margins are.
What is dead however is the concept of saturating a town with numerous branches of the same store. This worked when there was lots of competition but now there isn't it Just adds cost pressures.
Oh and ubersonic, the margins on preowned are huge, far bigger than new games.
Own brand accessories and preowned is where the big margins are.
[TW]Fox;21526772 said:
Doesn't matter how big the margin is if they can't sell it to get that margin, which I think was one of the points he was trying to make.
But their main problem was the multiple shops in prime locations in the same towns/cities. No point what so ever...
I'm pretty sure there is only on GAME in the city centre now right? There were two in Eldon Square but I thought they closed one down a while ago.
Caporegime
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The problem is years ago with the advent of, errm, the internet and prices went down Game/everyone else all kept the same pricing on the whole. Think stores like Game all thought they could charge people more for the convenience of buying same day and not waiting for delivery. The problem with that model is, if I buy 10 games a year, and only one I buy at short notice and want quickly that is 9 sales they miss, to make more on one sale. Basically I disregard physical stores for 99% of purchases because I generally don't have "console emergencies".
If they stopped screwing people for convenience then I might have thought about them more seriously for all my game buying needs. A business that goes after screwing customers the few times they feel forced to choose then, rather than going after every sale via great pricing is doomed to fail... badly.
If they stopped screwing people for convenience then I might have thought about them more seriously for all my game buying needs. A business that goes after screwing customers the few times they feel forced to choose then, rather than going after every sale via great pricing is doomed to fail... badly.
The model of selling packaged media isn't flawed but the model of multiple shops within few hundred yards is. We are not the customer base, so the fact we don't buy there isn't relevant. They made 90m 2 years ago despite the existence of play.com...
Administration doesn't mean the entire model is flawed, Saab went into administration, are you saying the model of manufacturing cars is not sound?
[TW]Fox;21527085 said:
Fox is right, Games self competition policy was (again in car terms) like British Leyland's method of 5 sub-companies all design/build a car aimed at the same market segment then battle each other for sales, its just stupid.
However what I said about the preowned games is also true, to put that in car terms its the same as taking cars in part ex then doing nothing with them except watch them depreciate and look good on the stock value books.