Casual Gamers Forcing Gamestop to Rethink Store Layouts

The Guardian Gamesblog has up a post noting that Gamestop will be rearranging stores to meet casual gamer needs. For example, they'll be creating a section just for music games (karaoke, guitar games, etc). They'll also be putting together a 'family-friendly' area, with a focus on titles like Nintendogs, Lego Star Wars, and the like. The post is based off of an interview in The New York Times with Daniel A. DeMatteo, Gamestop's vice chairman and chief operating officer. In his mind casual games are now so important to sales that the company is having to do some 'radical retail re-thinking': "There is a real breadth of properties now appealing to a much broader audience than we've seen before. Honestly, we are having to retool the way we think of things in our stores in terms of merchandising, layout and also customer service because it is no longer only the hardcore gamer walking in who knows exactly what he wants."

Comments

Good

[p0tat03]

I was just at the local EB a few nights ago, and in walks a girl and her mother. They looked around for a bit, and then noticed that all of the casual girly games (Barbie Horse Adventures or Nancy Drew or whatever) are all... 8 feet above the ground, on the highest shelf possible. The actual reachable shelves were stocked with shooters and EA sports titles. They had to get a guy over to bring each interesting game down for them. So yes, retooling their layout is certainly necessary.

being able to see the whole box would help

[Astarica]

A lot of time I have no idea what I was going to get, and if the box art looks interesting and I've at least heard of people talking about the game I'd give it a shot. However in Gamestop you can usually only see the spine of the box, and I'm less likely to pull a game out of the shelf just because it has an interesting name. Not to mention Gamestop seems to have their games sorted alphabeticlaly up to the letter G, and after that you have no idea where the rest of the games are. I'd rather go to Best Buy to buy games because at least I won't miss something that catches my interest.

Re:Pre-order

[gknoy]

Sounds like my Burning Crusade experience.

Went to Gamestop. The guy said, "Well, the UPS guy may get here today, or tomorrow. I think we'll have more then." So, I went nearly-next-door (in the same shopping center) to Best Buy, where there were multiple tables literally overflowing with the game. I walked up, grabbed a box, and checked out.

My game-buying experiences at Best Buy have been nearly-always been better than Gamestop. Not only do they have more PC games (local GameStops have practically all XBox/PS3 games), but I don't have to do the preorder BS. Heck, I saw DEFCON there... quite the shocker. :)

They open my games...

[MasaMuneCyrus]

My personal boycott is because they open my god-damn games. You can't go into Gamestop to buy anything without them having taken off the plastic wrap (or for PC games, cut or torn off the seal), opened the game up, and sloppily thrown the game disc(s) into crappy paper sleeves to store in a cabinet.

What if someone were to buy a game as a Christmas present, only to find out that someone else had already bought it? As soon as they walk out the Gamestop door, that game is now worth the $5 trade-in value, even if you've never opened it and still have the receipt; because the plastic-wrap is no longer on the game, you can't prove that you didn't open it.

It's bullshit policy. I want my "new" games, "new", not "mint" condition.

Re:I hope that means other changes

[radish]

The warranty is the source of one of my favorite GameStop stories. There's a store near my office, and being basically the only place in downtown NY that sells anything game related (sidenote: MASSIVE untapped market there retail people!) I used to go there quite often at lunch to browse. So a couple of years ago they started this whole "Gameplay Guarantee" thing, but as usual with their offers there's really no descriptions written down anywhere of what you get for your $3. The first time I bought a game and they offered it to me, the clerk said that it was basically a 100% guarantee that allowed you to return it anytime in the first year for ANY reason. He said you could return it if you didn't like it, if you beat it, whatever - for a full refund. That seemed too good to miss, so I started adding the $3 on all my purchases (when they asked, half the time they added it without asking).

Roll forwards 6 months, and I have a bunch of old PSP games I no longer play. Of course I kept the receipts for the guarantee so in I go to get my refunds. I hadn't been in the store for a while but I noticed right away that all the staff were new, even the manager. I go up to the counter, explain that I'd like to return these games I'd finished playing, and the clerk starts telling me that the guarantee is only for DAMAGED games before the manager stops her, tells her to give me the refunds (over $200) and explains to me that the entire store were busted for mis-selling the guarantee (they were paid commission on each one) and were all fired. He says they were getting 2 or 3 people a day coming in with the same story and they were honouring the refunds as a sign of goodwill. It must have been costing them a fortune...