On The Future Of PC Games At Retail

Posted by simoniker on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @12:01AM from the bye-bye-market-share dept.

Thanks to GameSpot for their article debunking rumors that EBgames and GameStop would entirely remove PC titles from their stores in the New Year, but still painting a somewhat bleak picture regarding the PC game's strength at retail. The article cites recent GameStop SEC filings showing "...just seven percent of its total sales were PC games, compared to 64 percent of revenues coming from console games." A games analyst also commented that, while a complete denuding of PC racks was probably out of the question: "It wouldn't surprise me if there was a pretty serious cutback in shelf space though, as that demographic is really only served by a handful of games." Although EBgames' top policy-maker clearly states: "PC games are and will continue to be a very important part of our business", with such a relatively small market share, where does the PC gaming market go from here at retail?

1 of 98 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Surprise surprise. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-16 01:05 · Score: 3, Funny

EB, Gamestop, and Babbages have filled their stores with console games, joysticks, movies, action figures, magazines, and loads of other crap.

Whereas PC games used to take up 95% of the shelf space, they now take up maybe 10% of the space in the store if you're lucky.

So is it any wonder that PC games make up only 7% of total sales? People re still buying PC games, they're just not going to EB or Gamestop to GET them, because the selection is so poor.