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Confessions of a Gamestop Manager
The site Consumerist has up a lengthy post from a former Gamestop manager, listing some of the sins, boons, pitfalls and promises perpetrated while he was on the job. Includes a discussion of the 'gutted' display game, pre-orders, the 'discount' card, trades, and lots of 'pro-tips' on how to get the most out of your Gamestopping experience. "19) Don't be afraid to sell things on your own! The going resell rates for any current games or accessories online is usually close to what we resell for. If its a much newer title and you don't mind listing and shipping it, you could make a small handful more selling it online yourself. Ebay and Amazon.com are obvious choices, but you may find other outlets that work for you."
Worth a try, though. Call corporate, of course -- retail stores/managers will have absolutely no idea.
Gamestop should just change policy and practice to make it easier for the consumer. People should not have to have a specialty method or use a guide to get the most out of the experience.
I see no reason why they can't have more copies. They're reservation policy is why I haven't shopped there for years.
On release day Gamestop has no copies, except for preorders. Then I go across the street and grab one off the shelf at my choice of stores. Hell I can grab one for in store pickup right now. Oh and those store do preorders too which indicates that they're receiving more total copies.
This just makes Gamestop look amateur. If department stores can have multiple copies of a game then why can't a store with game in their name have enough copies? Amateurs.
I find being offended by me offensive.
Luckily, my local Gamestop seems to have backed off of the whole strategy guide pushing. It was real bad there for awhile, you couldn't walk in the store without them trying to pawn off some completely worthless Prima guide on you.
For that matter, for a company that supposedly gets inside info on a game before it is released, Prima continually puts out some really poor quality material. Frequently they're little more than a slightly expanded version of what came in the manual and a bunch of screenshots that don't tell you anything. You'd thing they'd be great for giving you actual hitpoints or types of attacks or something, but they're usually far more interested in holding your hand through some already ridiculously easy tutorial puzzle or something. "Jump on the button to open the door!".
The final nail in the coffin of the whole Strategy Guide business is that you can almost invariably find far better guides online, usually much more complete and completely free. Gamefaqs alone renders Prima's whole business model obsolete, and it's far from the only gameplay resource online.
I read the internet for the articles.
The Gamestop trade-in business is based on on key tenet; we hardly turn down ANYTHING. For all the rage and screaming we take from people getting one dollar for years-old Madden games, you need to remember one key fact; we are taking in games that are often unlikely to EVER resell.
17) Outdated consoles are traded in every day. Almost every gamestop literally has fifty or more used Xboxes and Gamecubes in stock at any time. They do not sell and we get one at least every day, so they are worth very little. The new slim PSP is in much higher demand than the original, and so the trade-in value on the old model has since dropped. If you want the hot new version of anything, trade in as far before its release as you can stand so you can get the peak value.
in other words: we pointlessly hoard crap that we're not planning to ever resell, because we'd rather it go into a landfill than to actually sell it to people for what it's actually worth. I mean seriously - every game store I've ever seen has a huge stack of games they wouldn't give two bucks for if you brought them in, sitting in a bin, unsorted... and still priced at $30 each. I think they need to learn the meaning of the word "clearance".
Also, Don't lose your receipt and expect us to find records for you, it is quite difficult.
Our IT Structure Is Still Suck In The '70s.
Going to tackle this in reverse order. First, individual stores don't order games (disclaimer: I have never worked for EB/Gamestop, but I have talked with employees). Stores place pre-orders and other than that what they receive in their shipments is decided by someone in corporate. Presumably they have some sort of system, that probably involves big sweaty rolls of money from other large corporations being left in certain key CEO pockets, and possibly dart boards at some step to help determine exactly which games and what quantities will show up. As far as not making money on new releases that's not entirely true. They of course make profit off them, otherwise they wouldn't stock them, just like any other business. The key thing is that new games are not their most profitable item. They have essentially perfected a formula for squeezing the maximum profit out of each store that they possibly can. They start by reducing orders of new games to nearly the exact amount demanded. They do that by only carrying 1 or 2 new copies of any given game beyond what's pre-ordered. That ensures that they have enough on hand to meet the initial demand (assuming everyone pre-orders, and they probably order a certain percentage of the pre-orders extra to meet demand of those that didn't, say 10% of the pre-orders), but that they won't have many or any extra copies laying around. That's the initial investment, and they do make a bit of profit there. Where the big profit comes in though is in the re-sells. They give you something like $5 credit on a game that they'll turn around a re-sell for $40, that's 700% profit! That's why they want you to trade games in and buy used games, they make insane profit off each one. As for the strategy guides and accessories, those are just icing on the cake. They like to sell them of course, it's all profit after all, but the big bucks come from the re-sells. I'm what EB would consider a nightmare customer. I buy nothing but brand new games, rarely pre-order (unless I think it'll sell out, I'm usually right on that call to), and never buy guides or accessories. I also never trade in used games.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
Yea, it's a burp, and it's BS.
There are 5 Gamestops within 15 minutes of me, two of which are less than 2 miles from me (one in each direction). Whenever they're sold out of new games, I can almost always call around to:
Wal Mart
Circuit City
Target
FYE
And find a copy. All these stores are on the same plazas as the Gamestops. We just did it the other day with Guitar Hero III. None of the Gamestops had any, so we called the nearby Target and they had several in stock.
Why do they maintain such a ridiculous density of stores rather than combining some and running fewer, larger, better-stocked stores?
The pre-order excuse-making in this article is BS. They're either just trying to collect payment without a product for their own benefit or they're trying to streamline the distribution chain to ridiculously slim margins without any regard to the obvious negative impacts it will have on customers.
I also love the commentary on the used games and trade ins. Yea, you'll give me $15 for SSMB because it's in demand, but you'll also charge me $50 for a used copy of it, what's your point? It's not my fault you insist on taking unsaleable items, stop wasting money and give more reasonable prices on the used games you have in stock that people actually want to buy.
The whole article is crap. "It's not our fault the policies suck, it's your fault you won't kowtow to them! If you'd just do what we tell you and quit yer gripin' everything would be chocolate sprinkles and rainbows!"
Complete bullshit. Gamestop has enough clout to get a few empty boxes for display purposes. They have empty boxes for the games on the wall to advertise pre-releases. "Gutting" a game is entirely unnecessary. Furthermore, nobody is forcing them to sell the gutted game at full price. If they feel they need a gutted box on the wall to sell a game, then when it comes time to sell the gutted copy, they are completely free to sell it at cost instead of taking full retail profit. It is also unnecessary for the store manager to give the customer a hard time when they change their mind and refuse to buy because the game is opened.
Reserves:
Complete bullshit. Preorders are taken for systems and games which haven't had their release-date or retail price announced yet. Are you telling me that those allotments are guaranteed? Did everybody who pre-ordered a Wii from you last Christmas get their system before the new year?
More importantly, if you're going to tell this blatant a lie, why should we believe the rest of the trash you're spouting?
DVD Trade-ins:
Gamestop corporate just started a new chain called MovieStop where all they do is DVD trade-ins...
"Care to explain then how my local EB took several times more orders for the collectors edition of Burning Crusade then it was actually getting?"
Two words:
Unsecured loan
That's right Sparky, your hard earned pesastas can go into a floating fund for 30/60/90 days, during which time the company in question makes interest off it for nothing, pays down higher interest loans, funds a corporate fly by of Strippers'r'Us World Domination Tour©, or any other thing they f*cking well please.
What's a little gamer angst when stacked up against that, eh?
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
What you're asking is: Could I get product placement ("some of that front-and-center space") by giving EB/GS a larger cut of the revenue of the game? Revenues are risky; if your game is a flop, EB/GS will get a large cut of peanuts! So you're asking EB/GS to accept more risk in exchange for (potentially) greater reward.
If your game is a guaranteed success (not a guaranteed "hit," necessarily, but enough to pay for its costs and then some), then you can certainly afford to pay EB/GS for regular product placement, if only by getting investors to fund your advertising budget (which is where product placement is normally charged). If you have reason to believe that the game will sell well, that's exactly what you should do.
If you don't have reason to believe that the game will sell, then neither does EB/GS. In that case, they would get a larger payout only if your game sells more than expected; ideally, your expectations are spot on, so unexpected successes are supposed to be unlikely. That deal is not in their favor.
When I moderate, I only use "-1, Overrated". That way, I never get meta-moderated!
That's funny, I got the impression that refusing to stock what I want to buy and insisting that I make reservations and wait/come back later was the perfect formula for driving me to online stores and putting their bricks and mortar store out of business. Why should I pre-order with Gamestop when Amazon will have it delivered right to me?
is competition good, or is duplication of effort bad?