Things are going from bad to worse for the largest video game retailer in the world.
According to a report published by GameStop, 2018’s third quarter was a disaster: The company reported a net loss of 488 million USD, compared to net profits of just over 55 million USD from the same time last year. This is after the company announced the sale of its Spring Mobile operations for 700 million USD last month, and it opened itself up for a full-scale buyout in June.
GameStop’s report also indicates that used game sales, its bread and butter, declined by 13.4 percent. That said, new game sales went up by 10.4 percent and hardware went up by 12.3 percent. The report also insists that the company’s Black Friday sales were strong. Despite this, other costs put GameStop’s books firmly in the red.
But like I said years ago but only started writing back in June (because I’m a huge coward), the writing remains on the wall. Blockbuster franchises are experiencing the end of the digital/physical binary, such as Black Ops IIII‘s astronomically one-sided sale demographics after its release in October. A model of the next Xbox is rumoured to ship without a disc drive. Video games are expected to be all-digital within the next half-decade. And mobile games simply won’t stop eating up more of the industry’s market share.
The increase in sales over the quarter indicates growth for the industry as a whole, but that’s been a given since…well, forever. People will keep buying games in ever-higher numbers for the forseeable future, and that’s not stopping whether GameStop exists in its current form or not. And let’s not forget their majority share of EB Games…
Story sourced from GameRant
Arana blames her stunted social skills and her general uselessness on a lifetime of video games. Between her ears is a comprehensive Team Fortress 2 encyclopedia. Her brain remains at large.
