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Gamestop Cuts Hundreds of Jobs
1up.com is reporting that in the wake of the Gamestop/EB Games merger, hundreds of employees are getting the boot. From the article: "In addition, GameStop will also be shutting down the EB Games corporate headquarters in West Chester and distribution site in Coatesville, Pennsylvania. Layoffs aren't immediate, however, and will be staggered throughout early next year and into the summer, with some employees having the option of relocating to Dallas, Texas."
Have an EB Games and GameStop in your town? Soon you'll only have one. And no, it won't be a bigger store, either. This will make it harder to find used games, or certain things you're looking for without looking online. For example, last week I needed Hori screen protectors for my Nintendo DS. The GameStop in my town only had the Pelican ones - they leave sticky residue. So I made a trip to EB Games and discovered they indeed had Hori protectors. Eliminating one store will also eliminate selection.
I'm just surprised that after all this time, Dallas still figures so prominently in the consolidation. That's where the old Babbage's Inc., headquarters was, and also Babbage's Store #1 in Northpark Center, where I worked as a seasonal employee one Christmas back in the early 1990s :)
I remember saving up my money and getting my employee discount, to buy the first Stereo SoundBlaster at that store for something like $186.11.
My area (Phoenix, AZ) has quite a few stores from both chains.
The EBGames store that's near me is quite a good gamer resource; I patronize it regularly. The GameStops are only so-so.
After reading the article, I suppose that despite the EBGames store having the best sales performance in the region, it will be closed and its staff laid off in order to protect the turf of the mediocre GameStops.
Sigh.
...so besides Walmart, Best Buy, and Comp USA, there is now only one other chain to buy a new game in my locality (Wichita, KS, 400,000 lost souls). Now many places in the US now have one choice of specialty digital gaming shop.
I'm sure that this will do simply wonderful things to competition... and I'm sure that the bustling market in used titles will begin to slow down as the prices rise, and the sellback payouts drop.
Although on the console side, if I was interested in more than 10 console games across all three of this generation's consoles, I would just start up a Gamefly account.
Its getting harder and harder to buy a PC game these days.
So, slashdotters, what other specialty shop chains are around these days to pick up the slack and restore sanity to the retail PC market?
Performing sanity checks on your own beliefs is vital in avoiding poisoned koolaid.
And not get a job for a videogame store?
Wasn't the point of the Merger to increase revenue of both companies rather than to shut one down.
Of course mergers are never a benefit to the consumer, buying companies shareholders, or the employees of both companies (one gets laid off while the other picks up the slack with no pay raise).
The only people that benefit are the shareholders of the company being bought and maybe some insiders of the buying company who gain by their purchase or CEO bonus.
Personally, I think business mergers should be outlawed... It decreases competition and actually hurts capitalism (the economy) in general. Only indviduals should only be allowed to own stock in corporations and corporations should be forbidden in owning stock in other corporations. Of course if it was put into law, corporations would just get around this buy some proxy method.
Then again, the stockmarket is a good way to ruin a good company with a good business model, but shitty investors who are out to suck the comapny dry of all its venture capital.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
E3 will be less crowded next year!
Anyone remember the early days of EB when the sales clerk wore shirt and ties to sell you the rarest video games? And there was 4-5 people servicing the store. Super service, and treat the customers like a million bucks.
I am sorry, but both EB and Gamestop today is a mess. The management folks have done nothing to improve the store image. Besides buying old games, nothing separate it from some Bestbuy video games shelf.
And why does every guy behind the counter have to be so biased toward some system. Can I buy a PS2 game in peace without some guy shoving Xbox-is-better at me.
Oh noes! Now all the EBgames will close and leave us Canadians with only gamestops! All the 0 of them!
Dallas is good because it is centrally located in the United States. There are a few other companies that I know of that located in Dallas for this reason. In addition, the main Gamestop office is right on the western edge of DFW International Airport, making shipping via FedEx, UPS, DHL and other carriers relatively easy. From working there over a period of a few years, I can think of a few instances where that worked to their advantage (Dreamcast launch for one).
So they're offering Philadelphia area locals (West Chester) the option of relocating to Dallas? To anyone who knows anything about football rivalries, that's a pretty poor option for those folks.
This just in: Dead Sea Technologies is closing their Jerusalem office and relocating employees to their Egyptian offices.
... to get your DS screen protectors. Thanks to the internet and talking with other electronics owners, I was clued in to the fact that going to a fabric store (or walmart's fabric dept.) and buying some clear vinyl to cut to size is far superior to any screen protector offered at any retail store. The vinyl is significantly cheaper (covering a DS screen will only cost you ~ $0.03), leaves no residue, can be cut to fit more than just one system (PDA's PSP's and so on), and works as well as any commercial product.
So even if you had twenty different game shops in town to shop from, I highly doubt that any one of them would tell you that there is a cheaper and better alternative to the products that they sell. And the internet in this case wins out, not because you can buy something cheaper, but because you can be informed of something better.
And the choke hold they have on the used games market. I'll always sell & buy my games on newsgroups/privately
It looks like they are going to shut down the EB distribution chain and keep the Gamestop one. It's a bummer because in my mall the EB almost always gets the games a day earlier than the Gamestop. Also, the staff seems a little better in general. I wonder if the pay scales are comparable.
I'm noticing a huge gap developing in games selection at the mall stores vs. say Best Buy and other Big Box stores. Lots of games never appear on the shelves of the big box stores. The PS2 version of Psychonauts comes to mind first - no sign of it on any shelves outside of the mall. We're not just looking at a monopoly on mall game stores, but single-company monopoly on the retail sales of the more obscure titles.
I never really was too much of a fan of on-line shopping. I have a hard time getting around the delayed gratification. Slowly, I'm changing my buying habits. I hate it when the day I decided to poke around the mall store turns out to be the release date for some hot game and the tiny stores get mobbed with people claiming their pre-orders.
Enough of my complaining though, I'm going to go read a book.
I've been having the absolute WORST luck with EB lately. In my little nook of Orlando, I'm ringed by about six of them. Honestly, I don't know if they're all just terminally depressed from the merger notification or if they all just hire out of the same gene pool, but it was a nightmare just trying to get a stinkin' preorder done a month or two ago. The following is a direct quotation:
... ...
[I walk into the store, currently draped in Madden '06 flags, standees and posters]
Me: Hi, I can I preorder--
Clerk: Madden, right?
Me: Uh, n--
Clerk: Because it's coming out soon. It's gonna be the best one yet!
Me: Actually, I wanted Sigma Star Saga.
[Clerk stares vacantly for a second before cocking his head towards the GBA rack]
Clerk: Oh. Yeah. Well... Mario Superstar Saga's been out forever.
Me: No, Sigma Star Saga. It's a new one.
Clerk: They're not making a sequal to that one.
Me: It's a different franchise. Done by Wayforward? Namco's the publisher?
Clerk:
Me:
Clerk: Yeah... We don't do preorders here... You'll have to go to our Longwood location.
[I turn the PREORDER MADDEN 06!!!! standee on the desk to face him. He glances at it.]
Clerk: Excuse me, but I have to check our inventory for another customer.
[Clerk walks into the back room. I wait another 10 minutes before giving up and leaving. During this time, several college fratboys take the opportunity to shoplift several copies of Doom 3 and Half Life 2 while the counter is unmanned.]
And this is why I only preorder at Gamestop now. They not only let me do the preorder, but they also had copies of Riviera (which EB never even got) and a used Tactics Ogre: Knight of Lodis. Gotta slog through hell before reaching heaven, I guess.
In reference to the comment saying this will be a BAD merger for second hand selection could be slightly inaccurate. If there is only one shop in each town then surely that shop will be the main place that people will go to to sell on their old games, whereas people may see both as competition in the town and think they both pay old.
This could also symbolise the slowing in growth and decline of video game sales nowdays, although I can see overall profits going up in the next few months with the Xbox360, christmas and more.
Business Voyeur
heading to the internet, which in turn drives up prices. A lot of times you're competing for goods with people that have a higher cost of living. To me in Arizona $15 bucks for used Greatest Hits title is too much, someone in California might see it different. Add a couple million more people just makes this worse.
Competition's a dual edge sword.
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I drive by their Corporate offices every day on my way home. Lately (since this September) the large Gamestop sign that used to be on the building is gone. I don't know if they have moved offices, or are just redoing the sign as a part of the merger...
Great! Just what we need, more traffic to downtown!
I had a friend apply as used console repair man at their main office about a year back. Said employees would just pick up games out of the warehouse and walk home with them, sounds like a nice place to work if your a gamer! I guess everyone else gets the raw deal with less direct competition and all.
-Buddy of DoQ
I have never had anyone try and sell me anything I didn't want or get annoyed at me. In fact on two seperate occasions I have had people try and stop me from trading in used games for a dollar becaus it wasn't worth it. Twice I have had people deal with my incessant,"No I want this. Nah. I changed my mind. Ill take this. No. Maybe this." All the workers said were,"Buying a video game system is a major investment so take your time."
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
She probably ditched you for some other guy with a faster processor, if you know what I mean.
Offering Dallas as a relocation alternative will increase the attrition flow quite nicely...
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
The part of New England I reside in only has large chain stores that sell video games. How many people have locally owned stores (ie not Gamestop, Best Buy, Walmart, etc.) in their area?
I have fond memories of purchasing video games for my PC, NES, SNES, Game Boy, Genesis, Sega CD, Sega Saturn, and PSOne at Software Etc. and Babbages. At the time, there was no consumer Internet mechanism to buy online and outside of Toys R Us, my big-chain department store selection was limited to the mediocre selection of games at the local Zayre/Ames.
Used games could be mail-ordered through Funcoland. Also briefly in their local shops. Live was decent.
Fast forward a few years and all those games-only stores were absorbed into EBGames and Gamestop. PC games & hardware, once maintays of the front of the store, are all consolidated into a single bookshelf of shopworn boxes. Only the current crop of MMORPGs & their expansions live in the front.
Prices for new games were higher than the prices for those same games at Walmart, sometimes by as much as $10-$15. Buyback prices for trade-in games are at all-time lows. Prices for used games are retardedly high, especially for ancient games that are members of still-thriving franchises (example: A scuffed up, magic-marker'd Mega Man I cartidge for the monochrome gameboy can still be found for sale in Gamestop or EB Games for $17.99.
These days, if you want a deal on new games, it's just better to hit Walmart or Target. If you want a deal on used games or specialty items, the plethora of online shops and eBay are the only way to go.
Still, whenever I go to the local mall to watch a movie, I still instinctively wander into the mall's Gamestop/EBGames and lament changed times.
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