GAME (as in the shop GAME): Retailer Of The Year 2019

Not totally related I grant you but I'm surprised at just how gooseberry fool the trade in prices at Gamestation have become. OK, they have never been that good but they are now really dire. I notice they have got in the habit of giving an extra £5 value when you trade in 2 games for new releases...bollocks to that just give us a realistic price on the games in the first place, it is 100% profit for them the greedy swines. Actually, thinking about it, I have wondered why GAME/Gamestation don't just change their whole business model to preowned.

The only sad thing about GAME going under is all the redundancies. CeX have better prices for preowned, HMV have better trade prices (and a better selection of titles)

Poohsticks wrote:Not totally related I grant you but I'm surprised at just how gooseberry fool the trade in prices at Gamestation have become. OK, they have never been that good but they are now really dire. I notice they have got in the habit of giving an extra £5 value when you trade in 2 games for new releases...bollocks to that just give us a realistic price on the games in the first place, it is 100% profit for them the greedy swines. Actually, thinking about it, I have wondered why GAME/Gamestation don't just change their whole business model to preowned.

They would if they could, but their model depends on at least a small amount of new stock entering the chain in order to keep buyers interested. Otherwise the entire British Isles game industry would be powered by a single Fifa 97 cartridge.

Carlos wrote:The only sad thing about GAME going under is all the redundancies. CeX have better prices for preowned, HMV have better trade prices (and a better selection of titles)

Game and Gamestation will match HMV/CeX for trade prices. The new sections in Game/Gamestation are pitiful now, it's all about pre-owned.

To be fair part of the reason the pre-owned sections are so big is the amount of stuff being traded in. It has to go somewhere.

And if you think the staff at GAME are bad, try popping into a branch of Grainger Games sometime. Good lord

To be honest though, I do still use my local GAME for my pre-orders. They get a lot of exclusives too.

Down to 9p earlier today.

We could totally buy it all

I got £5.45 and a packet of wotsits.

TheTurnipKing wrote:

Poohsticks wrote:Not totally related I grant you but I'm surprised at just how gooseberry fool the trade in prices at Gamestation have become. OK, they have never been that good but they are now really dire. I notice they have got in the habit of giving an extra £5 value when you trade in 2 games for new releases...bollocks to that just give us a realistic price on the games in the first place, it is 100% profit for them the greedy swines. Actually, thinking about it, I have wondered why GAME/Gamestation don't just change their whole business model to preowned.

They would if they could, but their model depends on at least a small amount of new stock entering the chain in order to keep buyers interested. Otherwise the entire British Isles game industry would be powered by a single Fifa 97 cartridge.

Megadrive, SNES or Gameboy?

It really would be massively easy to sort GAME out, with just some obvious price changes. The management team are clueless.

Moggy wrote:

the entire British Isles game industry would be powered by a single Fifa 97 cartridge.

Megadrive, SNES or Gameboy?

They don't care so long as they can sell you a bundle with it.

Eighthours wrote:It really would be massively easy to sort GAME out, with just some obvious price changes. The management team are clueless.

Probably too close to the problems to see them. This might well serve as a wakeup call for them... but the responses sound rather defensive -

"what can we do, the poor economy"

, rather than "yeah, we're gonna fix it."

There's two in my local shopping center, which will close first, upstairs game or downstairs game, I hope it's downstairs game, they're gooseberry fool.

They never really recovered from the acquisition of Gamestation to be fair, it was a ballsy move that didn't pay off. They are losing far too much money keeping so many branches open. It sounds lame but if they want to survive they are going to need to close up some of the shops to save on the overheads, clear up the management and possibly use Gamestation as pre owned only.

Also can't they merge the Game reward card with the shittier gamestation one?

JiggerJay wrote:They never really recovered from the acquisition of Gamestation to be fair, it was a ballsy move that didn't pay off.

Arguably, the competition might have been better for the company than the crushing of that competition was.

Game's many, heinous crimes have been well-documented in this thread and over GRCade's entire lifestyle, but I can't help feeling that, if it were to disappear, our hobby may have lost quite a prominent and powerful force on the high street.

I mean, like them or not, it was quite nice seeing video games have a massive high street presence and pulling in even the average punters who don't mind paying £50 for a new game. Evidently, as that COD launch story (it being cheaper in a nearby HMV) proves, it still has some of the pull.

The stores themselves still look loads more profressional and classy than Gamestation, Grainger or Cex - even if the prices, staff or management or whatever let the side down. I would argue that they've helped make gaming that little bit more mainsteam (opponents would probably argue casual) to shoppers.

JiggerJay wrote:They never really recovered from the acquisition of Gamestation to be fair, it was a ballsy move that didn't pay off. They are losing far too much money keeping so many branches open. It sounds lame but if they want to survive they are going to need to close up some of the shops to save on the overheads, clear up the management and possibly use Gamestation as pre owned only.

Also can't they merge the Game reward card with the shittier gamestation one?

Aren't those cards gooseberry fool though anyway? I was looking at the gamestation card as I was looking at a new console purchase, I'd only get something like £6 back for spending £250. Cashback deals online are much much more profitable. And due to the fact Game/Gamestation rarely do anything to command my loyalty I'd rather pay for the cheapest price online than pay full whack in those stinky stores

Parksey wrote:Game's many, heinous crimes have been well-documented in this thread and over GRCade's entire lifestyle, but I can't help feeling that, if it were to disappear, our hobby may have lost quite a prominent and powerful force on the high street.

I mean, like them or not, it was quite nice seeing video games have a massive high street presence and pulling in even the average punters who don't mind paying £50 for a new game. Evidently, as that COD launch story (it being cheaper in a nearby HMV) proves, it still has some of the pull.

The stores themselves still look loads more profressional and classy than Gamestation, Grainger or Cex - even if the prices, staff or management or whatever let the side down. I would argue that they've helped make gaming that little bit more mainsteam (opponents would probably argue casual) to shoppers.

It's hard to remember a time now when Game weren't overpriced rip-off merchants, but once a time, they actually really used to be quite good. Lenient return policy, preowned price that weren't laughable, sizeable PC shelves, and good stock. Staff who could genuinely be counted on to be knowledgeable and not largely concerned with upselling plastic tat.

Christ, the upselling in Gamestation is bonkers...the staff must have it beaten into them. Have to say that from just listening in to a couple of sales today it certaintly works.

The fact that they're as popular as they are right now is pretty compelling evidence for them to put down their prices and get more people buying from them.

I know that retailers end up pocketing pretty much all the cash on a preowned sale but I wonder how much that segment of the market is worth. Whilst we all know that Game and Gamestation take the piss on their preowned prices this does really tend to be on the newer games. I dunno but back in the day when a game came out you never really saw it preowned for a while but now the shelves seem groaning with preowned new titles literally the day after release, there must be 6 or 7 copies of Arkham City in my local GS. You actually even see retailers offering the pay a fiver for a new title when you trade a title that was release the previous bloody Friday. If people are dull enough to pay £37.99 for a preowned title that they can get new for an extra £2 then more fool them and I'd imagine that this is printing money for the retailer.

Having said all that I do think that the 2 for £20 deal in Gamestation is a cracking offer for the consumer as when you look at all the quality titles it encompasses you cannot go far wrong...I just think that if they could curtail their greed on the newer release titles then this would encourage far more sales and they would still be making money.

Delusibeta wrote:Interesting to see many people not realise that share prices do not determine when a company goes bust, or indeed a lack of profits. It's when the cashflow dries up, that's when companies go under.

They've suffered massive losses throughout the last two years though. It depends how much capital they saved up during their boom years. My guess would be not that much.

I wouldn't be at all surprised to see both GAME and HMV go into administration in the new year. If there's any forumites on here working at GAME or GameStation I really would start looking for alternate employment if I were you, the way things are at the moment it may be tricky to get another job quickly.