What is GameStop going to be five years from now when digital distribution is the only way video games are sold? I can't imagine selling game-related tchotchkes is a very good business. What else is there?
They've got the space, and after 18 months of limited social contact it could be an opportunity
A hangout spot...a Gamestop-branded Dave and Busters or other video game lounge makes a lot of sense if you have the space. But the business reasoning is backwards: get people in and get them in a mood where they'll buy trickle-goods like food/drink, time on a given display...And all the while you suddenly have to contend with the culture of your patrons a lot more...directly. A snotty kid being brat in your store eventually leaves and is forgotten. In this new model, that kid wants to stay in your store a lot longer and worse will try to interact with the other patrons (that being the point of your store, after all).
Steam and Epic were able to leverage their catalogue, and got moving early on. Moving into an online game platform would be far more of a than building a hangout.
> And all the while you suddenly have to contend with the culture of your patrons a lot more
You do, but Gamestop don't have much choice, they're in a dying market that's been disrupted.
Local boardgame shops and bookshops near me have managed to survive by moving into this type of business.
Turning businesses around is HARD.
I hope they do something, but I'm not optimistic.
They are on the brink of maker movement event.
Potential end of covid (or at least restrictions), people will look for places to meet and chill together.
Its not going to be easy, but they have an angle here i think.
Not turning them round is harder.
* CEO gets a golden parachute and finds a new job. A competent CEO will always find a job. A turn-around is risky, and a failed turn-around will have exposes and will ruin a career. Easier to stay-the-course.
* Workforce is laid off, struggles for a few weeks, and usually finds new jobs. The layoff sucks, but turn-arounds involve equal layoffs (and indeed can be harder to find jobs after; my employer went out-of-business is a mighty good reason to leave a company). Employees also hate change; in many cases, finding new jobs like old jobs is easier than re-qualifying.
* Shareholders lose a little bit of money, but are pretty diversified, and from a 50 trillion market, GME even at its inflated valuation is around 1/20th of a percent.
... and new ventures come in and fill the gap.
Capitalism is built on survival-of-the-fittest. If a company is not fit, it's sometimes more humane to kill it and replace it with a fitter company than to keep it straggling along. Companies aren't people; they're abstractions. There's no moral remorse to replacing a company with a better one. If you're running DBCorp which has a mediocre, buggy product, and a mismanaged workforce, and I run DBInc which takes your customers, hires your workforce, and has a high-quality product and well-managed workforce, in the end, everyone often ends up happier.
Vultures might want to pick the bones, and many owners might not care, but some do.
Of course if you think it's hard you're free not to bother.
What a concept.
The owners are the shareholders.
GameStop was started as a side gig by Riggio, who was also the founder of Barnes and Noble. He has bigger things to worry about, like his retirement. It's been run by professional executives for the most part.
DeMatteo is still around, but I think that's it for the founding team. If you can call a series of merges a founding.
Yeah, if I own a company, I'll sweat and bleed to make it successful. That's the #1 founder / startup advantage.
That's not true for publicly-traded companies. Those are an abstraction. If a CEO is making $35 mil and someone offers them $50 mil, guess where they're going?
A lot of startups don't realize that as a source of advantage, but it's a big one. It's a lot of where the agility comes from too. A professional CEO need to first worry about keeping their job, then about their next job, and finally, the organization. For a founder, for the most part, those are one and the same.
If you gave me a failing public business as an owner -- with no accountability, no board to please, no existing executive team to back stab me, and all the upside -- I'd do better than most CEOs in turning it around. That's not because I'm more qualified or competent, but because I'd have the freedom of being an owner. The original CEO, if properly incentived, would usually do a better job than I would, in turn.
It's not going to be an easy option, but it's pretty much the only option other than winding up the company.
* I don't own GME or have an interest in this whole thing one way or the other, nor do I have an opinion on Roaring Kitty's research. I just find this all very interesting to follow.
I don't know anything about how any of these companies operate logistically so I can't make any comments on this. It sounds like you'd like to put yourself on an infinitely long waiting list that fulfills PS5 orders on a first come first serve basis. My assumption is that something prevents companies from being able to do this because not a single one of them has this implemented.
Tangent - is that direction really guaranteed for console games? Digital sales have been around for a long time and I realize the console world is really pushing it now but I'm curious if console gamers are buying in to it as fast as other markets (e.g. computer gamers and general entertainment markets (movies))? Maybe the pandemic is speeding it up[0]?
I've bought exclusively digital for computer gaming for over a decade (maybe two decades, yeesh) now but continue to cling to physical for console gaming because of the trade-in factor. E.g. most recently when the Switch came out I waited a few months for one to come in to a local used games store and traded a Wii U + games for the Switch + Link's Awakening all on trade-in value. I have done pretty much that or something similar for console upgrades for as long as I can remember. I don't even have a sense of what a new console costs at this point.
I have always assumed that is sort of the norm but I suppose that wouldn't make any sense for the broader market, hah.
[0] https://www.polygon.com/2020/8/11/21363951/video-game-sales-...
1. An increasing amount of video game spend is now add-ons. EA makes as much off FIFA Ultimate Team as they do off FIFA, maybe more. GameStop gets a bite off the first retail sale, and off used sales, but they don't get a bite off all the various aftermarket transactions. All three consoles now have pay-to-play online. 2. An increasing amount of video game spend is now free to play. Fortnite is free to play. Call of Duty Warzone is free to play. Apex Legends is free to play. Valorant is free to play. 3. An increasing amount of video game spend is on subscription plans, obviating the need to buy software. Microsoft has re-aligned their entire company around Xbox Game Pass. EA has EA Play. Ubisoft has their equivalent.
So even if 50% of nominal unit sales for digital + physical software remain physical, that's now far less than 50% of dollar spend. Every console is hooked up online, and with the new generation some models don't even have disc drives.
GS can probably retool itself to do a better job of competing with Amazon and eBay -- and they should! -- but it can't do a better job of competing with all of the secular pressures killing games retail.
I guess it does make sense if you intend to buy games as gifts for other people.
As for PC gaming, it essentially already is all digital.