The entire big stock blowup a few years ago only started because they were in the process of being shorted until they went out of business, and it was just autism and nostalgia that saved them that day. They've been fucked for years.
I'd wager selling TCG cards and merch for nerd stuff makes up most of their profits, while the games themselves are just tradition. Like, everytime I've been in one the last few years its been dudes buying Pokemon cards and we all know how that market is exploding.
And yeah, Major 1st Party Nintendo games are never discounted ever in any storefront, because Nintendo will never discount them themselves. You'll pay over 40$ if not 50$ to full on them until the production run ends, and then again on the re-release next console. That's not really Gamestop's fault there, as you can see the Non-Nintendo ones are still overpriced but not to the same extent.
But yeah, brick and mortar game stores do themselves zero favors compared to online shopping and its comical that they don't realize it. Any game worth buying is wildly overpriced compared to its age, and anything in a reasonable price range is throwaway nonsense like WWE '19 that no one will ever buy again.
I'm at least lucky that my local one has been run by the same lady and her few dude employees for going on 25 years now (I got my Halo 3 Legendary from them and we all still remember it), so I can go in and talk to them to get a lot of information or special deals that normies wouldn't.
The digitization of the game industry also screwed them over. Sadly even the point of physical console games is fading because they all try to make you install a 100 GB day one patch as soon as you put it in the drive.
With PC games, I don't even know if the physical media contains game files anymore or if it's just a portal to EA Play or some other abomination.
PC gaming was the first to go really. I remember Gamestop even during its peak in like 2008 having a comically small PC gaming section, and it was usually all Blizzard gamechests anyway. I doubt they've had discs with the game on them for over a decade.
And yeah, its usually pointless to go physical because its 99% of the time the same price but requires twice the effort and all the possible positives aren't provided because its incomplete on the cart/disc anyway.
Mario Tennis and Mario Golf on the Switch, with patches that were supposed to “flesh out” the game, which both launched with laughably shit single player experiences left such a bad taste in my mouth that I gave up all interest in physical and modern game “collecting”.
That’s the kind of thing that isn’t noticed till 5 years down the line when Nintendo looks around and wonders where the customers went.
You get a plastic scratch-off card with an activation code on Steam or the Epic Game Store™. It used to be a DVD case with a paper card inside, but even that's too expensive nowadays.
But yeah, brick and mortar game stores do themselves zero favors compared to online shopping and its comical that they don't realize it.
Online shopping (i.e. Amazon) is its own flavor of shitty, with rampant chinkshit counterfeits and shipping now taking longer than two days due to ongoing enshittification. That's not even mentioning the porch pirate problem.
But with regards to video games specifically, Amazon doesn't get launch-day deliveries with Nintendo (don't know about other publishers) anymore because they leak games like a sieve. The underpaid slave labor working the warehouses keep sending the games out 1-2 weeks early, if not outright stealing the games and leaking them on pirate sites themselves. You're still better off going brick-and-mortar if you care about playing on Day 1.
Yeah for Day 1 stuff is the one huge benefit they still have. If you want a physical copy of a game immediately you should always go to the store. Unless you are banking on them sending it early which I have had happen shockingly often when I did buy it (for games I didn't care if it was a bit late).
The entire big stock blowup a few years ago only started because they were in the process of being shorted until they went out of business, and it was just autism and nostalgia that saved them that day. They've been fucked for years.
I'd wager selling TCG cards and merch for nerd stuff makes up most of their profits, while the games themselves are just tradition. Like, everytime I've been in one the last few years its been dudes buying Pokemon cards and we all know how that market is exploding.
And yeah, Major 1st Party Nintendo games are never discounted ever in any storefront, because Nintendo will never discount them themselves. You'll pay over 40$ if not 50$ to full on them until the production run ends, and then again on the re-release next console. That's not really Gamestop's fault there, as you can see the Non-Nintendo ones are still overpriced but not to the same extent.
But yeah, brick and mortar game stores do themselves zero favors compared to online shopping and its comical that they don't realize it. Any game worth buying is wildly overpriced compared to its age, and anything in a reasonable price range is throwaway nonsense like WWE '19 that no one will ever buy again.
I'm at least lucky that my local one has been run by the same lady and her few dude employees for going on 25 years now (I got my Halo 3 Legendary from them and we all still remember it), so I can go in and talk to them to get a lot of information or special deals that normies wouldn't.
The digitization of the game industry also screwed them over. Sadly even the point of physical console games is fading because they all try to make you install a 100 GB day one patch as soon as you put it in the drive.
With PC games, I don't even know if the physical media contains game files anymore or if it's just a portal to EA Play or some other abomination.
PC gaming was the first to go really. I remember Gamestop even during its peak in like 2008 having a comically small PC gaming section, and it was usually all Blizzard gamechests anyway. I doubt they've had discs with the game on them for over a decade.
And yeah, its usually pointless to go physical because its 99% of the time the same price but requires twice the effort and all the possible positives aren't provided because its incomplete on the cart/disc anyway.
Mario Tennis and Mario Golf on the Switch, with patches that were supposed to “flesh out” the game, which both launched with laughably shit single player experiences left such a bad taste in my mouth that I gave up all interest in physical and modern game “collecting”.
That’s the kind of thing that isn’t noticed till 5 years down the line when Nintendo looks around and wonders where the customers went.
You get a plastic scratch-off card with an activation code on Steam or the Epic Game Store™. It used to be a DVD case with a paper card inside, but even that's too expensive nowadays.
Online shopping (i.e. Amazon) is its own flavor of shitty, with rampant chinkshit counterfeits and shipping now taking longer than two days due to ongoing enshittification. That's not even mentioning the porch pirate problem.
But with regards to video games specifically, Amazon doesn't get launch-day deliveries with Nintendo (don't know about other publishers) anymore because they leak games like a sieve. The underpaid slave labor working the warehouses keep sending the games out 1-2 weeks early, if not outright stealing the games and leaking them on pirate sites themselves. You're still better off going brick-and-mortar if you care about playing on Day 1.
Fuck it. I'm going back to pirating.
Might look into the newest rasberry pi type of device and load it up with roms.
https://vimm.net/emulate
Yeah for Day 1 stuff is the one huge benefit they still have. If you want a physical copy of a game immediately you should always go to the store. Unless you are banking on them sending it early which I have had happen shockingly often when I did buy it (for games I didn't care if it was a bit late).