game in serious trouble?

[Sui]

It really makes no sense why they have 2 Games in one shopping centre, if people want to go to one, they'll go to one. Having an extra shop surely can't increase impulse buys THAT much if people are going for a days shopping?

 

[arknor]

and then in between the 3 games and game station there is granger games where they sell more games and for cheaper

well done game. well done.

grainger games isnt between them but its only a 30second walk from one of the eldon square exits

all the white squiggly area is actually one huge shopping centre and the 3 red dots are the GAME stores

 

[ubersonic]

No, because that was never the case.

........... What? :S

Lol, "Back in the day" if you wanted a PC game you had three choices, Buy it online, buy it over the phone or buy it via mail order, high street shops just didn't sell them in those days.

Your only options were to phone up a mail order company, write to a mail order company with a cheque quoting the order number for what you wanted (these company's had big lists in PCPLUS and other magazines of the day) or order on-line via the company's BBS (a long dead part of the internet that was killed off by the "web") some companies even let you download the game this way.

This was how I had to get stuff like Commander Keen and Duke Nukem (original one) when no physical shops were even interested in PC games.

 

[antijoke]

"Back in the day" they most certainly did sell PC games, shelves and shevles of the things in fact.

I always went to Game/EB to buy PC games. Hell even HMV sold a good selection PC games (I bought Half Life from there).

Mail order game suppliers - Special Reserve.

Ordered many a PS1 game from them.

 

[Sui]

I know, I miss those days, now you just get shelves and shelves of console and hand held games which are quite frankly awful. Oh the good old days!

 

[arknor]

"Back in the day" they most certainly did sell PC games, shelves and shevles of the things in fact.

I always went to Game/EB to buy PC games. Hell even HMV sold a good selection PC games (I bought Half Life from there).

yea game was 90% pc in the 90s , i remember them selling the voodoo cards and early creative sound cards

there was a tiny corner for all the consoles about as big as the pc section is now

 

[MoNkeE]

Lol, "Back in the day" if you wanted a PC game you had three choices, Buy it online, buy it over the phone or buy it via mail order, high street shops just didn't sell them in those days.

Your only options were to phone up a mail order company, write to a mail order company with a cheque quoting the order number for what you wanted (these company's had big lists in PCPLUS and other magazines of the day) or order on-line via the company's BBS (a long dead part of the internet that was killed off by the "web") some companies even let you download the game this way.

This was how I had to get stuff like Commander Keen and Duke Nukem (original one) when no physical shops were even interested in PC games.

Sorry, but that was never the 'norm' to download games :S You may well have done that, but it's never been a widespread common practice!

 

[Pudney]

Mail order game suppliers - Special Reserve.

Ordered many a PS1 game from them.

One of their shops was about a 20 min drive away from where I lived as a kid. Loved going there, the shop was great, aah the good old days

 

[antijoke]

I went to the Nottingham store opening, rows and rows of games, loads of consoles playing games, competitions going on.

Surprised they just disappeared, could have carried on rather well in the Internet age of mail order I would have thought.

edit:

It means that the company’s eight stores, Internet business and mail order service has been closed with immediate effect, leaving 45 staff at its Sawbridgeworth head office redundant.

Cliff Rainbird, former buyer and son of founder Tony Rainbird, told MCV: “We’ve tried to sell it on, and we did have an offer. But it fell through at the last minute, so we had no other option but to close.”

Rainbird explained that the business, which has been running since the late ‘80s, is another casualty of the super-competitive retail climate: “The margins have been taken out of games, and the Internet is so competitive it has been very difficult over the last few years. It doesn’t help that the supermarkets have come in selling new releases at £29.99 either.”

Maybe not, lol.

 

[BunnyKillBot]

I mentioned this in the thread in the games section but I'll post it again here:

The shareholders are being screwed over here by the declaration by the board that the company has zero equity. Especially when you consider this:

The main problem i have with the way things are headed, is they are basically planning on sweeping their massive **** ups under the carpet and relaunching themselves as a new company - debt free - with a number of the incompetent management still in place to **** it up for the future. Even with a partial restructructuring of management, it takes more than '1 guy somewhere near the top' to truly mess up a business like this. The whole of Game's management needs to be taken out back and disposed of.

But no, we have a system in place that allows them to dust the fecal matter off their jackets and pretend like nothing happened - while people lose their jobs and they entirely destroy the gamestation brand.

 

[ubersonic]

"Back in the day" they most certainly did sell PC games, shelves and shevles of the things in fact.

I always went to Game/EB to buy PC games. Hell even HMV sold a good selection PC games (I bought Half Life from there).

I wasn't talking about the late 90's... this was before GAME started. Hence what I said about it being more common to get PC games off the net than from a shop, then the shops joined in and took over, and now its going back.

Sorry, but that was never the 'norm' to download games :S You may well have done that, but it's never been a widespread common practice!

It wasn't as widespread as buying via mail order but it was quite widespread, perhaps not as much over here as the rest of the world but most people I knew back in the late 80's who were into computers would order stuff on-line or over the phone (or even by fax). Remember in the old days owning a computer was definitely not common practice!

 

[TheBigCheese]

I remember when I first got a PC a 486 SX33 bought from Tandy (remember them?) I was looking in Game for something to play with it and it was a toss up between Doom 2 and Cyclones...Doom 2 won the day!

The assistant even made me a boot disk there and then, I watched him type it out by hand on the computer they had in the middle of the shop for demos etc...Game was amazing back in the day.

 

[Jono8]

Wow, really? You honestly didn’t get my point?

You claimed that administration is evidence of a failed business plan. It's not. It can be, but more often its evidence of mismanagement of an otherwise sound business plan. Hence the Saab example. Manufacturing premium saloon cars is not a failed business model. Infact it's a very sound and very profitable business model. But despite 'the manufacture of premium saloon cars' being the Saab business plan they still went into administration - because of mismanagement and brand issues.

So you are wrong to cite administration as evidence for your claim that it’s a flawed business model.

The issue almost everyone in this thread seems to miss is that you and me are not the target market for this sort of shop. They don't appeal to us because we just don’t shop like that. We've moved on. I don't buy games from Game either. I buy them online. But we are not the entire market - plenty of people would rather buy offline. I walked past a Thomas Cook at the weekend and it was crammed full of people paying a small fortune for a holiday they could have booked in 15 minutes on the internet for half the price. But they still do it.

This doesn't mean the internet isn't a threat - of course it is. 20 years ago you and me WOULD have bought from someone like Game because where else would we buy from? But it isn't a new threadt It's been there for years. Were there no internet shops in 2009 when Game Group posted profits of almost £100m? Of course there were. The internet has been an issue for high street retail for over 10 years. The emerging popularity of services like Steam is an emerging threat - but it's not yet serious enough to kill retail, 70% of media like this is still sold as packaged products. Steam has taken huge chunks of the PC gaming market but then the PC Gaming market hasn't been useful to retail for years anyway.

What has gone wrong is poor management and inflexibility. As I said previously back in the early 2000's the highstreet was FULL of places to buy Games. An independent Gamestation, HMV with a much bigger presence, Woolworths, even WH Smiths sold Games. If you didn't have a GAME at one end of town the customers would just go over the road to Woolworths. It made sense to have a huge presence. Now, however, this isn't the case. Woolworths have gone. WH Smith don’t sell Games. HMV are clinging on. The market is almost devoid of any real high street competition. You don't NEED 3 stores in a town now. If there isn't a GAME at one end of town the customer will now walk to the GAME at the other end. Therefore where in the past multiple stores captured custom from others, now all it does is drain cash from the business and massively increase overheads.

And huge overheads in a business with low margins = administration.

GAMES misfortune is caused by it's policy of massive expansion in a market that required rationalisation.

What I would imagine will happen now is a new company will emerge from the ashes - perhaps with backing or as part of somebody like Gamestop, which will see GAME remain on the high street but with a far more rational store portfolio.

So if it is a sound business model (high street game retailer).. where are all the high street game retailers....

 

[Calabi]

Game bought them all.

 

[aproctor]

So if it is a sound business model (high street game retailer).. where are all the high street game retailers....

Most retailers who sold games did it as a side line e.g. Woolworths.

If Game only had one store in each town, they would still be around.

Loads of shops still sell them,

Every supermarket
Gamestation
HMV

Game always had people going in and buying, it was the fact they were paying for two lots of staff, two lots of rates, two lots of rent, etc etc.

Console games are on discs + massive demand = Profit?

I think many here are getting confused with what a business model is.

If you look at all the articles surrounding this the two things that kept cropping up were that they were due to pay a massive quarterly rent bill and the staff wages were due.

These are almost always the biggest expense for businesses.

So there business model did fail but it had nothing to do with the product they sold.

 

[[TW]Fox]

So if it is a sound business model (high street game retailer).. where are all the high street game retailers....

Owned by Game Stores Group Limited!

Game was actually EB Stores Group - in 1998 they expanded by purchasing the main competition - Game. The company rebranded in 2002 and again expanded by purchasing the main competition with Gamestation in 2008.

The remaining independants - like Grainger Games - are mostly still around. Most of the small indies went bust but that was mostly because they couldnt compete on price with the buying power of the big players like Game or the low margins of people like Play.com.

 

[BunnyKillBot]

Loads of shops still sell them,

Every supermarket
Gamestation
HMV

Nobody thinks of Blockbusters when it comes to games, but they are actually really decent. Rent for 5 quid for 5 nights, and if you buy it get five quid off is great. Either you complete the game while you have got it, or love it and buy it.

 

[Jono8]

Owned by Game Stores Group Limited!

Game was actually EB Stores Group - in 1998 they expanded by purchasing the main competition - Game. The company rebranded in 2002 and again expanded by purchasing the main competition with Gamestation in 2008.

The remaining independants - like Grainger Games - are mostly still around. Most of the small indies went bust but that was mostly because they couldnt compete on price with the buying power of the big players like Game or the low margins of people like Play.com.

Ok, well we shall see then won't we. If now Game has gone bust, we get an influx of high street game retailers then it obviously is a sound business model.

I doubt that is going to happen..

 

[Jono8]

Most retailers who sold games did it as a side line e.g. Woolworths.

If Game only had one store in each town, they would still be around.

Loads of shops still sell them,

Every supermarket
Gamestation
HMV

Game always had people going in and buying, it was the fact they were paying for two lots of staff, two lots of rates, two lots of rent, etc etc.

Console games are on discs + massive demand = Profit?

I think many here are getting confused with what a business model is.

If you look at all the articles surrounding this the two things that kept cropping up were that they were due to pay a massive quarterly rent bill and the staff wages were due.

These are almost always the biggest expense for businesses.

So there business model did fail but it had nothing to do with the product they sold.

I know there is nothing wrong with the product they sold. I am talking about selling it on the high street with dedicated stores.

Your examples of others are terrible.

HMV - not doing so well themselves are they? Also not a dedicated game store
Gamestation - Owned by GAME so also going bust.
Supermarkets - Not dedicated game stores and often have a limited selection anyway.

 

[Energize]

HMV and supermarkets only have a small selection of games in my experience. Though Game and Gamestations's selections also left a lot to be desired for what are supposed to be dedicated stores. Whole blocks of shelves filled with the same top selling game highlights their bad stock selection.