Dealspwn writes: Last week finally saw HMV find a new buyer, ensuring one more traditional bricks and mortar business would enable gaming to have a high street presence alongside Blockbuster and Game. With most of us using online retailers to buy and pre-order games nowadays, you may wonder why we still need video games to be represented on the high street.
As this console generation winds down, we’ve seen a steep decline in game sales across the board. In 2012, retail sales were hit the most and dropped by over 20%. Game, Blockbuster and HMV barely survived, as gamers’ attention wavered. The original Wii’s bubble burst and there was a lack of any serious mass appeal products to renew lapsed players’ (read: more casual than you and I for example) interest. The numbers for Call of Duty are down and we’re repeatedly hearing of sequels selling only a shadow of what the previous game did – hello DMC.
"As part of the integration of GAME, we will be phasing out the trade-in, pre-owned and Game Elite offerings in the UK over the coming months," a spokesperson for the chain's owner Frasers Group told BBC News"
Seems like a blizzar move here. It's the second hand market they thrived upon.
If I'm not mistaken game are owned by the same company who own GameStop in the US?
"Seems like a blizzar move here"
How? Game charges £5 delivery fee. Overpriced.
GameStop doesn’t own Game. Mike Ashley does, who owns Sports Direct, House of Fraser, etc...
Yup I was wrong about ownership.
Yes they charge £5 delivery that is terrible. GAME is a awful company. But it is a blizzar move as just a few years ago they where crying over that the pre owned market was their bread and butter. Trade in prices have always been crap at game. But realistically got most cities in the UK. If you wanted a new game on release. Game was the only store that you could go to to trade games in towards brand new games.
Whaaaa
Gamestation is gone
Grainger Games is gone
CEX is shit
Jesus. The only reason we use GAME is because there’s nobody else and they get away with this shit.
I I'm fine with cex. It's the best place to trade and buy second hand games. Game has been rubbish for years imo.
Surprised they will be getting rid of Game Elite as well. I have £32 game points. Think it's time I got and spend that and get something I have been meaning to buy.
Game owned GameStation. I didn't 'see a point owning 2 Game Stores with different names that sell the same stuff.
They owned them but they didn't originally.
It was only when they were bought and after GAME went into administration they started to close GameStation shops down or replace them with GAME ones
Basically getting rid of their competitor
Games Centre was a great wee independent retailer in the UK too, sadly gone years ago.
I pay £3/month for Elite as I usually buy 2-3 PS5 games a month so getting 10% back as credit on a £6-£70 game adds up. Strange move they're stopping Elite now...
Their trade in offers are f****** atrocious even when games are in good condition and still almost new releases
CEX is a joke for prices now. They list games as mint condition, which is against the Trades Description Act. Mint condition mean that an item has never been handled/used. They'd be hard pushed to advertise games as being in good condition. Handled by so many people, scratched disc and food on the manuals. That's CEX is a nutshell.
I remember taking some film steelbooks to CEX when I needed money once, they had never been opened but when I took them they made me take the plastic off them, open them up and only gave me shitty trade offers that matched "Used" conditions. Why? Because they had been opened...
eBay does well on second hand games, always works for me, always get more than I would have done trade in .
which if effectively a double con, as with a trade in you are normally offered a fair market price, on the reasoning, you are in-affect promising to buy the future product form the same retailer.
Yeah eBay will give you a better return especially if you get those fee promotions every 2 weeks, some just like the no hassle risk with CEX. No chance I'd trade in a rare/expensive game to CEX like my copies of Shantae & the pirate's curse for switch there tho, they'd probably give you like 1/4th of it's value.
CEX is the one for me.
eBay have terrible seller protection and after being burned twice over games that I've sold, I just stopped using it. If I want to sell a game, I just take it to CEX who offer a decent price compared to GAME.
olMyerslo can I ask how you were burned? Because I use ebay frequently but I make sure to have the item tracked and signed for. Only issue I had was a guy trying to claim PayPal saying he didn't receive a controller, but I had the tracking number so they ruled in my favour
Were people even doing this these days? They offer awful amounts. The best way is to ebay or gumtree. Day ones games are generally getting 90% of my money back after I'm done with them
Probably kids/teens still doing it. I have not personally traded anything into game since I traded in a psp and games on the release day for the vita. Even then I got them to price match cex on trade in credit. They even stopped doing that a few years ago.
A high street store can not compete with online. Game prices are £59.99 for a new release. Go with many of the online stores and those games are £44.99-49.99 for day one.
The fact game charge you £5 more to collect in-store compared to their own online shop is a joke. The excuse was on the lines "it's our stocking fee."
I stopped using game around 5 or more years back. I'd pop in looking for a real bargain, but rarely find anything.
I'm not surprised they're going out of business, they could not get with the times and they definitely could not compete with online when greed was the forefront.
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Simply put, as internet speeds continue to grow and companies continue to embrace the control that gaming on the cloud affords them, retail is inevitably going to die. In the future, video game retail stores are going to be equivalent to any inner city CD & vinyl music store.
no sympathy for these store, they have all been robbing gamers with BS prices for years, and karma comes back around, they should have just let HMV die off
It will be a sad day as far as jobs etc but i cant wait for GAME to go bust, they been ripping off people ever since i can remember! I remember my friend had tekken 3 when we was young he sold it them for a £5...came back and they was selling it for £30.
(we was young £5 was alot then, or until we seen they was reselling it for £30)
TBH totally honest, I don't even know what anybody buys games anymore. 95% of games are worthless after a playthrough. All games are simple enough to playthrough within 12 hours, give or take. The games with great multiplayer aspects are the only game which warrant a 60 dollar purchase.
Now, for 17 bucks a month, one can rent and finish as many as 4 games..... A full savings of more than 220 dollars! I don't think gamers just stop and do the math. Look at it!
This also ties in with backward compatibility. It's not necessary by any means. Only a select few titles, just like movies, warrant a replay.
I think gamers are entirely too involved with replaying games just to kill time and want to hoard their old games just cuz they can. The store which sells me games is in decline because more people like me are saving thousands and playing more.