Bye Bye Game!

HMV were always overpriced, even back in the 80's selling LP's (vinyl) for £6.99 or £7.99 when the going rate was £4.99. However the trade off was that they stocked rarer harder to get titles, back then there was no WWW or internet retailers if you wanted some obscure solo album.

It will be a shame if game go, I remember when they first started up around 1993 or thereabouts. Up till then WH Smith believe it or not was probably the hotspot for buying games, either that or you went mail order from Special Reserve. However they're not helping themselves. Swindon has two game shops plus a gamestation plus the Debenhams outlet. No need for four locations.

The sad thing is if they do go it will be just more empty shops in the town centre or at best taken over by gold buyers or people trading dodgy secondhand cellphones.
 
One thing anyone like me who pre-order PC games will really miss is the 20-25% discount off RRP nowhere else seems to do that Amazon come close but everyone else including shopto.net are nowhere near that level of discount on new release PC games in UK.

PC games will get much more expensive now once they are gone & its only a matter of when not if they are way beyond saving the negative PR alone would sink them now once the firesales finish its over just before their next rent payment is due.
 
Vern1961 said:
It will be a shame if game go, I remember when they first started up around 1993 or thereabouts. Up till then WH Smith believe it or not was probably the hotspot for buying games, either that or you went mail order from Special Reserve. However they're not helping themselves. Swindon has two game shops plus a gamestation plus the Debenhams outlet. No need for four locations.
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My computer games shop was always Bits N Bytes in Liverpool. I welcome back the old independents. They seem to cater for the gamer.
 
Athanor said:
Like I say, there's a certain pleasure in seeing the supermarkets and on-line retailers do to Game what Game did to everyone from EB to local independents.
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Yup, that's why I'm glad Game are going down too. They bought up game stores etc early on and pretty much made a monopoly for the UK games market, they then used bully tactics with people wanting to sell games in the UK since they were such a huge distributor and making them agree to their terms. It rather sweet seeing EA etc now telling them to sod off :D
 
The problem is that these shops need to cover the costs of the high street premises, and therefore they need to charge much more than online retailers. There is no way they can really compete with online prices (unless they have huge bulk buying power).

Admittedly Game seemed to be poorly managed, which obviously doesn't help.

There is a shift to buying online, which is a shame for retail stores. People are happy to go in and view/test items in a store, then walk away look up the price online and buy there since its generally much cheaper. Then they moan that their local store has shut down and there is nowhere they can see the item they want :p

When it comes to items like games then there is not really much to physically see = buy from cheapest source = online. As people get more and more used to online shopping these retail places are bound to die out.
 
The problem is also out of date retailing methods. Just stack the shelves and sell as much as you can at as high a cost as possible and hope for the best. The high street needs to change to survive, it needs to push itself as a leisure activity and make the experience much greater for people to bother with rather than sit at home and order online.

What ever happened to all the consoles that used to be in place? We used to go to Virgin megatore in our lunch and have a quick blast of pro evo or similar, it got people into the stores and you'd often end up buying something from there because you're in the store already. Game stores are always one unit small shops, they would do much better if they doubled their floorspace and made it more of a pleasure to go there.

I guess WH Smiths is a good example - let the whole world come into your store and read all the magazines until their heart's content. Once you get people in there they'll more likely to buy something. Smiths still make a healthy profit from selling random stationery items and magazines. A lot of people would claim they're another 'dinosaur' of the high street.
 
If game closes I'll be sad to see them go and if it means people will lose there jobs as well.

Lets hope someone buys them out and changes can be made to the way game is managed.
 
The Games in Newcastle seem to be everything at full price :/
Placed an order on the website using up the last of my points, the order was cancelled and the points are missing, sent them an email days ago with no reply. Robbing Basts :(

Was after the Batman Arkham City CE, Gamestation had it at £19.99 apaprantly, 49.99 in game lol :(
 
Nipped in yesterday afternoon to my two local GAME stores (Yes, two within about a ~5 minute walk of each other in the City Centre) and there wasn't much of a 'sale'.

They had advertised a 'spring clear out' and most of the pre owned games were in the £10-15 bracket. I was looking at a game for my DS but the pre owned copies were still only ~£5 cheaper then the game new so I didn't bother.

Everything else was still at full RRP.
 
Tummy said:
Nipped in yesterday afternoon to my two local GAME stores (Yes, two within about a ~5 minute walk of each other in the City Centre) and there wasn't much of a 'sale'.

They had advertised a 'spring clear out' and most of the pre owned games were in the £10-15 bracket. I was looking at a game for my DS but the pre owned copies were still only ~£5 cheaper then the game new so I didn't bother.

Everything else was still at full RRP.
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I had planned on nipping into the city later to see if they had any bargains after reading the mention of a fire sale in the article. Don't think i'll bother now :/
 
I picked up Fallout 3 GOTY for the PC this morning, £7.98 ... I thought that wasn't too bad as it's about the same as buying it online ... well I tried :o
 
HaggisUK said:
I had planned on nipping into the city later to see if they had any bargains after reading the mention of a fire sale in the article. Don't think i'll bother now :/
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The highlight of the visit was chatting to a Polish couple who'd started playing World of Warcraft and were curious about in which order / what they should do (They'd been playing the trial account together over the weekend and wanted to get the full game each)

That aside, nothing had changed in the store, it wasn't any busier then usual and the 'Spring clear out' barely lived up to the title.

I was pleasantly surprised to see Crysis II for £32 pre owned though :D
 
Tummy said:
Nipped in yesterday afternoon to my two local GAME stores (Yes, two within about a ~5 minute walk of each other in the City Centre) and there wasn't much of a 'sale'.

They had advertised a 'spring clear out' and most of the pre owned games were in the £10-15 bracket. I was looking at a game for my DS but the pre owned copies were still only ~£5 cheaper then the game new so I didn't bother.

Everything else was still at full RRP.
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Same as Cheltenham and Plymouth then, unless anything has changed since Sunday/Monday.
 
piggeh said:
well, my gamble on these shares looks like its about to FAIL big time. £100 wasted.
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LOL - Serious?

As you say, was a worthwhile gamble though as although many wanted them to fail as reward for the way they have **** on the business in recent years with the Jurrassic management, I do not think many believed it would happen.
 
SiD the Turtle said:
Gameplay (originally a dial-up premium gaming service IIRC)
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The gaming service was a service provided by Gameplay. I think it was called WirePlay. It was fun while it lasted. It had some kind of multiplayer aerial dogfighting game which was a laugh to play on dial-up :D

Much fun was had by all until they turned it into a "proper" call centre :/
 
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