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Gamestop Seeks Funding For Merger
GamesIndustry.biz is reporting that the EB/Gamestop merger is pending a $950 million investment Gamestop is seeking to close the deal. From the article: "GameStop has announced the sale of USD 950 million in notes to investors, which the company will repay in six or seven years, with interest, in a move aimed at financing the firm's forthcoming merger with Electronics Boutique. The company has offered the sale of USD 650 million in Senior Notes priced at 98.688 percent with an 8 percent fixed rate of interest, and USD 300 million in full priced Senior Floating Rate Notes which will bear interest at the London Inter Bank Offering Rate of 3.875 percent."
Seriously, around here (Raleigh) the only true "video game" stores are EB and Gamestop. It'd completely remove competition from this region.
Which would be sad, seeing as how Gamestop recently stopped (in my area) keeping older consoles, but EB still does -- I'd hate for a single bad decision to kill some other thing about the stores I like.
Jay | http://oldos.org
They didn't change when they went from being a Funcoland
They didn't? Well then you must have had the shittiest Funcoland ever.
Funcoland was a no-frills game shop, where prices on used titles were updated weekly based strictly on supply and demand. The store stocked used stuff from every console generation. They either had what you wanted, or they didn't, and they could tell you right away.
Now they're all like GameStop. Obnoxious staff, limited tradeins to keep supply low and prices high, constant nagging to pre-order, stupid cardboard markups and advertising all over the place, and only current generation gear and games for sale.
The incentive from purchasing from GameStop or EBGames instead of buying online is rapidly aproaching zero. If Funcoland were still around, I'd still be broke.