I took my youngest to go get a new nintendo mario game because he got a really good report card.
Went to gamestop.
USED mario games were over $40. No original box. No booklets. Just the cartridge. Over $40 for a used nintendo game. A popular, mass produced game. Not a rare game. On the old nintendo switch 1. Not even a new console.
I looked around. Everything inside Gamestop was severely overpriced. Like i can click buy now used games on ebay for cheaper with free 2 day shipping.
Behind the counter was a fat soyboy and some geek nerd staring into a phone. Neither looked the slightly bit interested in helping me or even trying to make a sale.
Gamestop is more worried about tweeting than actually making sales or returning earnings per share to share holders. Fuck 'em
How is gamestop still in business? I'm about to short these fuckers too. I don't care about the memes. This is a business setup to fail.
I took the kid out to get a milkshake, ordered him a game online and took him to the sports place to pick out some athletic gear instead. Gamestop lost another sale.
The entire big stock blowup a few years ago only started because they were in the process of being shorted until they went out of business, and it was just autism and nostalgia that saved them that day. They've been fucked for years.
I'd wager selling TCG cards and merch for nerd stuff makes up most of their profits, while the games themselves are just tradition. Like, everytime I've been in one the last few years its been dudes buying Pokemon cards and we all know how that market is exploding.
And yeah, Major 1st Party Nintendo games are never discounted ever in any storefront, because Nintendo will never discount them themselves. You'll pay over 40$ 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.
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).
I took my youngest to go get a new nintendo mario game because he got a really good report card.
Went to gamestop.
USED mario games were over $40. No original box. No booklets. Just the cartridge. Over $40 for a used nintendo game. A popular, mass produced game. Not a rare game. On the old nintendo switch 1. Not even a new console.
I looked around. Everything inside Gamestop was severely overpriced. Like i can click buy now used games on ebay for cheaper with free 2 day shipping.
Behind the counter was a fat soyboy and some geek nerd staring into a phone. Neither looked the slightly bit interested in helping me or even trying to make a sale.
Gamestop is more worried about tweeting than actually making sales or returning earnings per share to share holders. Fuck 'em
How is gamestop still in business? I'm about to short these fuckers too. I don't care about the memes. This is a business setup to fail.
I took the kid out to get a milkshake, ordered him a game online and took him to the sports place to pick out some athletic gear instead. Gamestop lost another sale.
The entire big stock blowup a few years ago only started because they were in the process of being shorted until they went out of business, and it was just autism and nostalgia that saved them that day. They've been fucked for years.
I'd wager selling TCG cards and merch for nerd stuff makes up most of their profits, while the games themselves are just tradition. Like, everytime I've been in one the last few years its been dudes buying Pokemon cards and we all know how that market is exploding.
And yeah, Major 1st Party Nintendo games are never discounted ever in any storefront, because Nintendo will never discount them themselves. You'll pay over 40$ 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.
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).