The high street video game retail chain 'Game' (which also owns it's main competition Gamestation) has announced this morning it won't be stocking or honouring advance orders of the biggest game launched in March, EA/Bioware's Mass Effect 3, due out in two weeks. It has also allegedly been cancelling advance orders of another high profile EA title, SSX, which is out on Friday. It failed to source any stock of the big Nintendo Wii title of last month and there are strong rumours it is unable to supply the next Mario game due out imminently, because Nintendo won't let them have any more stock until some of their bills have been settled.

Game recently announced the closure of a third of it's stores and the merging of a couple of different online retailers it also owned.

I'd say if you have any credit with them, I'd cash it in. Now.

I doubt they will be around by Christmas, though their shops seem to be full and always have queues. People clearly not buying the high value stuff then.

Christmas? try April.


Various reasons. Firstly because they do a lot of 'up selling' at the tills which slows down the transactions a lot. Secondly, in recent years they they've sustained themselves on a model largely reliant on people trading in old games for credit which they use to buy new games. Then Game sell the second hand stuff at stupid markup rates (seriously - I've seen them give someone £10 trade in on a game and put on the shelves priced at £35 second hand when it's £40 new). The problem with that is you end up with masses of stock but little cash-flow. Of course, it also slows transactions down if every third person is trading in three old games against one new one.

Overall, I didn't ever think their business model was truly sustainable in the face of online shipping and digital delivery but if they can't even get the big titles to get some cash in, they're not going to be long for this world.

Basically, they went low-margin mass market when they should have gone for the high value customer who does buy new games with cash. Their own fault really.

Ah! That explains why the BBC stated Game would not stock Mass Effect 3. Makes sense. TBH I'm surprised that there are any highstreet games shops in this day and age. Supermarkets are cheaper and convenient, and online shops mean you don't need to leave the house.

Game as a company utterly deserves to die on it's arse. I wonder what the developers make of it though

For the devs, it's one less supply chain to pump their products into, so lost revenue. However, they may see the death of a major player in the second hand market as a good thing.

Anyway, Game Over. Insert coin to continue.

The PC section in the local GAME store is just pure [LIFTED].

These days I buy games in the Steam sales and that's it.

I was going to pre-order ME3 from Game too as I have some points to spend. Oh well.

I hardly ever use them to be honest apart from deals e.g. I traded GOW3 & £8 for BF3 Limited Edition on release day.

I did order the ME3 limited edition, which was previously only available from Game. There was a mad scramble to re-order when it was announced it was to be available from Amazon, Shopto etc instead. I've currently got two copies on order going to have to decide which to cancel unless someone wants one..

I reckon around 7th March they will call in the receiver - or whenever their next quarters rents fall due.

It will make life easier for HMV, who will just expand their games and related hardware sections.

For new games that's not really true, people will just buy the games elsewhere (eg supermarkets or online). It's the loss of easy access to buy and sell 2nd hand games that's the issue. People may be less inclined to pay huge sums for a new game if they think they're going to struggle to sell it on. If another way to do that becomes available (do supermarkets or HMV do that?) then there shouldn't be an issue for the devs at all.

HMV do second hand games. I don’t know about supermarkets.

I know Tescos do, seen the 'pre-owned' section in my local one.

Jon

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/33 ... ras-wrath/



Sorry, I just have no sympathy for Game.