Another thing to keep in mind pertaining the timing of this move. Flash is about to get accelerated by the GPU big time. What we have in flash today vs. what we should be seeing by this time next year will be night and day. Flash games will no longer be cheesy little coffee break distractions, they will actually be modern games.
Like Brian said, Gamestop is looking to the future of content delivery. They have to do it, selling digital content on disks, thats the old way of doing things.
That said, I honestly like my local Gamestop and the people that work there. The reason the margins are so horrendous on the used games is to subsidize their regular retail business that they do at a lousy margin. The reason a company non specialized retailer can do it and still make some money is because of their product mix. Gamestop was stuck selling games at around 15% despite carrying all the inventory burden and labor to forward the publishers agenda. Hardware margins were even worse. Its impossible to make that kind of money without the dedicated volume, and when people started buying more and more titles at the local Wal Mart, Gamestop had to do something to survive as a specialty retailer. My experience in Gamestop has generally been favorable. Do I trade there all the time? Not really, sometimes its a horrible deal for the gamer, but.... its simple, you take in, they quote, you say yes or no, its not like they are putting a gun to anyone's head. Gamestop is no more evil than any other large corporation, which is to say they are at least a little evil, but no more than anybody else in business.
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Like Brian said, Gamestop is looking to the future of content delivery. They have to do it, selling digital content on disks, thats the old way of doing things.
That said, I honestly like my local Gamestop and the people that work there. The reason the margins are so horrendous on the used games is to subsidize their regular retail business that they do at a lousy margin. The reason a company non specialized retailer can do it and still make some money is because of their product mix. Gamestop was stuck selling games at around 15% despite carrying all the inventory burden and labor to forward the publishers agenda. Hardware margins were even worse. Its impossible to make that kind of money without the dedicated volume, and when people started buying more and more titles at the local Wal Mart, Gamestop had to do something to survive as a specialty retailer. My experience in Gamestop has generally been favorable. Do I trade there all the time? Not really, sometimes its a horrible deal for the gamer, but.... its simple, you take in, they quote, you say yes or no, its not like they are putting a gun to anyone's head. Gamestop is no more evil than any other large corporation, which is to say they are at least a little evil, but no more than anybody else in business.