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GameStop Stock Price Tanks After Microsoft Announces New Digital-Gaming Service (venturebeat.com)
After Microsoft announced Xbox Game Pass earlier this week -- a monthly service coming this spring that will give you a selection of games you can download and play on your Xbox One for $9.99 a month, GameStop's stock price dropped nearly 8 percent. The news likely worries investors who view Xbox's instant game library a potential threat to GameStop's sales. VentureBeat reports: The brick-and-mortar retailer makes quite a lot of its money from secondhand sales where it resells products that consumers have traded in. If more people are playing digital games, that takes product out of the supply chain that could end up on GameStop store shelves. Additionally, Game Pass looks like it will primarily traffic in older games that people would typically would purchase used. Older releases like Mad Max, Saints Row IV, and Halo 5 are some of the big options that Microsoft is highlighting. Of course, GameStop isn't completely removed from the digital-gaming ecosystem. The retailer sells a lot of currency cards for the Xbox Store, the PlayStation Store, the Steam PC-gaming portal, and it's possible that people who don't like using a credit card will purchase cards to buy their subscription to Game Pass through GameStop. But that will likely not make up for a dearth of used-game sales or trade-ins if a lot of people adopt a Game Pass subscription.
I'm amazed that anyone cares at all about either GameStop or Microsoft's store when Steam, GoG and Humble Store are around.
Brick and mortar video game shops will end up like movie rental shops. They will disappear if they still rely on video games sales as their main source of income.
The video games industry is moving away from selling supports. In fact, most of the time, they are selling keys, the disc is just here so that you don't have to download the content, and that's only if there aren"t mandatory updates as big as the whole game.
Publishers also do everything they can to limit the second-hand market since it doesn't make them any money. They can do it the "evil" way : making the game tied to a non-transferable online account, or the "good" way : offering massive discounts on older games, effectively undercutting the second-hand market. Often they do both.
Brick and mortar shops may survive by focusing on hardware, merchandise, and collector items. They may also attempt to build communities (organizing events, competitions, etc...). But software alone won't cut it.
Fuck retail stores. About 10 years or so ago, BEFORE services like Steam, major retailers like GameStop decided to cut down on their stock of PC games and stock many more console games. Because somehow they felt that "piracy" was going to kill PC gaming, but console games were going to be a sure thing because they're just that much harder to pirate. Well you reap what you sow. PC games are still selling strong. Steam made 3.5 billion US dollars last year, and Steam is not the only seller of PC games. And console makers are starting to clue in that they don't NEED a middle-man either. Maybe this way more money can go to the people who actually develop titles instead of useless middle men who think they get to have a say in what gets to go on the shelf. Oh yes, pay to play is alive and well in retail. If you're a little guy good fucking luck ever getting your product into a place like GameStop. And the mall owner shouldn't worry too much, I'm sure they will always find another cell phone store to plug that hole.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Soon, you can kiss Steam goodbye (I predict that Windows 11 Home Edition users will not be allowed to install non store or non UWP apps... you just wait and see).
The numbers don't support your argument. I'm sure all 20 owners of Windows 11 will be disappointed. Hell even Windows 10 isn't selling that well. I use Windows 7 and have NO plans to change. So uhh, I think it might be a case of the tail wagging the dog. Microsoft will code themselves right out of their own market if they do this.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The MS service has a rotating list of games that only stay on for 30 days, is mostly comprised of first party games and others that are close to $10 used anyway. For RPGs, sports games, multiplayer games, fighting games, etc you're probably going to spend a lot more than 30 days with them, and on top of that you have to download these 20-50+ GB games to play them at all, which realistically limits many americans to 10 games a month if they don't do much else with their internet connection... And how are you going to play through them so quickly before they get swapped out?
All in all it probably won't change things much for Gamestop, buying a game physically is a lot more convenient and easier to enjoy compared to this service.
Twinstiq, game news
Gamestop owns a sizable chunk of the download business (about $1 billion of digital downloads per year). They also own a chunk of Steam and benefit by selling Steam cards and digital codes and will sell the Xbox cards. I don't think the closing of stores is new, that is inevitable. Gamestop's plan to convert old stores to ThinkGeek stores is probably going to go the way of Sharper Image... The console refresh cycle is just beginning though. I know it's impossible for /. readers to comprehend, but not everyone thinks computers and digital downloads are "easy".