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

a sad irony about Red Devil Games' closure

[AtaruMoroboshi]

I was one of eric's loyal customers, even though there were two gamestops, two ebs, a target, and a toys r us and more 20 minutes closer to me.

There was a morning earlier this fall when I said to myself "I better e-mail eric and reserve Gunstar Super Heroes, Dragon Quest VIII and Final Fantasy IV (gba)." It turned out that that was the morning they announced their closure.

And if Eric's reading this: Congrats on the new baby daughter!

Re:a sad irony about Red Devil Games' closure

[egrissom]

Hey man! Thanks, I just saw the article got slashdotted. Unfortunately I don't know if many people actually read the article, it was more a focus on gamestore retail dissappearing in the next generation, and not on the death of indie retail. Indie retail has been dead for some time, this was about EB and Gamestop's future problems. that was really the dialog I was trying to create, but the title of this thread makes it misleading. Oh well, good to hear from ya.

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?

[egrissom]

You make a lot of good points, its foolish to underestimate the customers that are accustomed to the brick and mortar method, but if the experience is seemless enough i don't think the transition would be all that hard to pull off. Especially if XBOX Arcade and Nintendo's online game distributions are a hit this coming generation. The next generation is what- 2009? 2010? Speeds will be faster, online penetration will be larger, and Microsoft will be (if all goes well for them) on their third generation of LIVE. A system like that creates a seamless transaction- order a game the way you order a movie on a cable box. No worries about giving away a CC number- they already have it. Granted there are issues from bandwith to piracy, but hell its 2010 anyway so we are all probably slaves to robot monkeys anyway. Who knows though- its all speculation anyway, i just believe for publishers and consumers there are just too many positives in the digital distribution collumn.

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.