The End of Indie Retail?

Next Generation has a piece discussing the problems facing independent videogame retailers, with commentary from a gent who just recently had to close down his store. From the article: "In our desire to maintain our own idealistic goal we overlooked a key element to any capitalist venture: Capital. Sales are everything and as base and pedestrian as that sounds, it is not so easy to pull off. There is no room in this industry for empathy. You certainly don't get anywhere steering people away from product that you've overstocked, since you know it sucks."

Comments

...the more they stay the same.

[irn_bru]

As it happened with bookstores and happened with record shops so shall it happen to your local neighbourhood game retailer. It's a shame but it all seems rather inevitable...

Re:Luckily.

[Kuvter]

I noticed this while going shopping at a mall the last trip i made. Besides the stores having a few different items there wasn't much of a difference.

People flock to lower prices and huge stores can give that over mom and pop stores.

Atleast it's illegal to have Walmarts in Rhode Island

400 lb gorilla or 20 lb monkey?

[imunfair]

TFA: The funny thing is those giant retail stores are in for a world of hurt. The giant 400-pound gorilla that has yet to truly reveal its retail chomping head is Broadband. Currently about half the country has some form of DSL or Cable modem, and that number is growing. Download speeds are increasing as well, and once we start seeing download speeds of 100Mbps, content on demand will swallow the game retail beast whole.

I disagree. Yes, broadband speeds are going up, and yes the saturation level is increasing - but I don't think that means the big developers are going to make it their primary distribution system.

What are they really going to do? Make larger maps, add more detail to graphics, add more Hi-Def cutscenes. Only MMO* and other generes that are quite dependent on the internet for playability will resort heavily to this method - if any do at all. Sure we have steam, and it's easy to use and a pretty great service - but that isn't going to stop them from sending their CDs to Best Buy. They know the guy pacing up and down the game aisle is a valuable customer, and for at least the next 40 years there are plenty of people accustomed to shopping at brick and mortar stores, even if they game online.

Heck, I know plenty of adults that are wary of giving their credit card number for a business transaction online, much less buying a game for their own entertainment.

Re:400 lb gorilla or 20 lb monkey?

[KingSkippus]

They know the guy pacing up and down the game aisle is a valuable customer, and for at least the next 40 years there are plenty of people accustomed to shopping at brick and mortar stores, even if they game online.

And I, in turn, disagree. 40 years? Wow, that's a long time to be guessing things won't change dramatically. Businesses work so much differently now than they did in 1965 it's unreal, and changes are coming a lot faster now than they have been.

I know that if I had my choice of buying a game in a store or over the Internet, I'd pick the Internet every time. Hell, I already do, buying most of my games at Amazon.com, Gamestop.com, or other online retailers, and I grew up in a brick-and-mortar world myself. If they would let me download the stuff I buy instead of shipping it to me, all the better!

I think that as brick-and-mortar shoppers get older and today's kids who are used to doing everything on the Internet already start getting disposable incomes, you're going to see exactly what Eric's talking about. Brick-and-mortar stores will last a bit longer, but eventually, it just won't be profitable. Everyone will buy online or, in the case of brick-and-mortar shoppers, get games at general merchandise retailers like Target and such. There just won't be a place for brick-and-mortar game stores any more.

Article disqualified

[Red Flayer]

No way I'm going to bother reading this, with these lines quoted in the summary:

"In our desire to maintain our own idealistic goal we overlooked a key element to any capitalist venture: Capital. Sales are everything and as base and pedestrian as that sounds, it is not so easy to pull off."

Capital is not sales; capital is not profit. Capital is what you invest in a business. Did he forget to fund his shop? Or did he just not get the sales he needed to be profitable? Sounds to me like no matter how much capital he invested in his shop, it would never have been profitable

I'm sad that he went out of business, but capital is not what he forgot. And that kind of inaccurate writing, quoted in an article summary, just turns me off.