Game Retailer GameStop Says It Can't Sell Itself, Sees Stock Drive 27 Percent (arstechnica.com)

GameStop announced today that it has called off a decision to find a private buyer for the company and its subsidiaries. "The announcement ushered in the public company's largest stock-value dip in over 10 years, seeing it plummet in one day from $15.49 to (as of press time) $11.28 -- a dive of roughly 27 percent," reports Ars Technica. From the report: The Texas-based gaming retailer had been linked to acquisition rumors, as The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that multiple private equity firms had been circling GameStop -- and its subsidiaries, including the merch-focused ThinkGeek and the gaming magazine Game Informer. That report had suggested a deal might close by mid-February.

However, Tuesday's statement indicated that prospective deals fell through "due to the lack of available financing on terms that would be commercially acceptable to a prospective acquirer." The rest of the statement offers little clear hint of the company's next steps beyond pumping the cash from a recent subsidiary sale into options such as "reducing the company's outstanding debt, funding share repurchases, or reinvesting in core video game and collectibles businesses to drive growth."

Comments

Bricks and Mortar Game Shops Would Sell More Goods

[dryriver]

If the game packages sold there actually contained the BLOODY INSTALL DISCS. Steam has ushered in a nasty era where you walk into a bricks and mortar shop, plop down 60 bucks for a game, and get a plastic box with only a download code and a little flyer inside. What ever happened to putting actual install DVDs inside a game case? Of course people will not buy at meatspace retailers any more. There isn't much point to paying money for a plastic game box with literally nothing inside it. Now if someone managed to make dirt-cheap 40GB ROM chips for distributing software from physical stores, that might change things quite a bit. In many countries, broadband speeds are so bad that games take hours to download. A lot of people may prefer walking over to a physical game retailer and picking up a little ROM cartridge with a full game on it.

Re:Bricks and Mortar Game Shops Would Sell More Go

[Narcocide]

+1 underrated. GameStop's downward slide has been depressing to watch, but every single time in the last 4 years that I've tried to prop them up with my own money, neither the staff on hand nor the stock room were prepared to do their part of the bargain. I really hate having to walk next door to Target or Best Buy. Why do they do a better job at actually stocking the games?