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It may give power to the players, but it might soon run out of power for itself.
For people who are experienced with the gaming market of our time, it came to no surprise that the game retailer GameStop missed Q3 Street prediction after shares dropped 12%, reaching their lowest point in the past ten months. The Q3 period is one of the most barren periods in the gaming industry, with most games opting for a Q4 release, making retailers earn money through pre-orders.
And GameStop is one of the biggest pre-order enthusiasts on the market while being one of the most criticised companies in the current market. Their usual endevour to make certain DLCs only available through pre-orders issued at their stores has made them into a company which is generally looked upon with a degree of cynicism by game critics across the world.
GameStop also has their return program, through which you can return an used game in order for you to get your money back, giving them the oportunity to sell that same game at a lower price, without giving any money to the company which the developed it.
The fact that GameStop is slowly starting to decline from the point of view of revenue is not surprising at all, due to the ever growing online marketplaces such as Steam for the PC and Playstation Network alongside Xbox Marketplace for consoles. This is also boosted by how publishers and developers are starting to turn away from retail specific pre-order bonuses, apart from major companies like Ubisoft, Activision and EA. But even “The Big Three” game publishing companies have started to dial down more and more when it comes to brick-and-mortar stores, focusing either on their in-house marketplaces (Uplay for Ubisoft and Origin for EA) or on other online retailers.
Because of the growing interest that is put into cloud storage servers, people are no longer to have a physical copy of the disc which they have to go and pick up from the store, they can easily buy it online at no expense what-so-ever. By doing this through Steam, for example, you could basically install that game onto any PC you wish, as long as you have internet conectivity, without the need to carry the game with you.
True, by focusing completely on non-physical copies, you are left with virtually nothing if the server shut down or if your internet doesn’t work, but if you look at the majority, it looks that this is a sacrifice they are willing to make.
Even though the company hasn’t missed their predictions by a veritable large sum, missing it by about 0.08 billion dollars, the fact that GameStop missed Q3 Street prediction after shares dropped 12% and that they even missed it makes the public at lare very skeptical when considering the relative survivability of the brick-and-mortar retailer.
Image source:www.gamestop.com
