71–80 of 199 posts
I’m still not exactly optimistic for their chances, but I guess Netflix does show these kinds of tech pivots can work. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.
Yes, but Netflix famously saw their pivot coming from the very start. They didn't name the company MoviesByMail.com -- they named the company for the future wave they intended to hit.
What is GameStop going to be five years from now when digital distribution is the only way video games are sold? I can't imagine selling game-related tchotchkes is a very good business. What else is there?
Believe it or not, plenty of people (~40%) still buy physical copies. I don't expect it to go down to 0 in just 5 years.
Stadia is currently on the verge of flopping and we're not even sure where other streaming services may go. Streaming video games are literally constrained by the laws of physics and the need for extremely responsive user input. It's exciting but it's also a whole different engineering problem than what Netflix solved in order to edge out their advantage over Blockbuster.
Steam, the Playstation/Xbox Stores are the correct comparisons. That said, I doubt Gamestop has been struggling these last few years simply because there has been a movement towards digital downloads.
People seem to forget that these digital stores have existed for the longest time and are not at all new innovation. Take a look at the sentiment towards digital only consoles - overwhelmingly negative. Newer AAA games require so much storage space that the progression of networking bandwidth aren't keeping up with the demands at all.
I'm not going to speculate where GameStop is headed because they haven't announced those changes yet. However, the speculation of evaluating their future based on digital downloads or the Blockbuster story is absolutely foolish.
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I'm not into the gaming community but I suspect there's a big contigent in the pre-teen/teen age range. GameStop could pivot into a local gaming/community place safe for pre-teens and teens that is semi-supervised. Parents could feel more comfortable knowing their kid is hanging out at a place where there is at least one adult to make sure they aren't doing bad things.
That sounds like the LAN Cafes (AKA "PC Bangs" in Korean) of old. They were at their peak pre-broadband, but as far as I can tell, have long since fallen out of favor. Every now and then I see a new one pop up - usually focused more on consoles rather than PC games, but they seem to inevitably go out of business.
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I mean they probably weren’t doing anything except rapidly trying to sell their stock options that had 100x’d. They more than anyone knew they weren’t worth $325 a piece.
Sales from officers have to be scheduled in advance precisely to prevent that kind of behavior.
See Rule 10b5-1
No big surprise that one of the new executives is coming from Chewy, given Ryan Cohen.
Chewy is an entirely different business model with little applicability to GameStop. You can’t download cat food and your console doesn’t die if you don’t buy it a physical game every single month.
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Clearly not everyone thinks that's the state of affairs. Roaring Kitty has clearly done quite a bit of research and thinks GME is undervalued. And if you believe that many of the folks on /r/wallstreetbets are being genuine, then they feel similarly. Time will tell. But there's certainly no guarantee that this is a "once in a lifetime overpriced valuation".
Common sense puts it at $20 Optimistic might be $90
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Chewy is an entirely different business model with little applicability to GameStop. You can’t download cat food and your console doesn’t die if you don’t buy it a physical game every single month.
You're not wrong, but don't forget that there are plenty of physical goods in gaming. Every nerdy IP has merchandise and that's why GameStop acquired ThinkGeek. There are tons of nerdy merchandise and collectibles to sell. Instead of massive clearances on items that don't sell, they could offer subscriptions services like LootCrate and when you get there you're not too far off from monthly cat food.
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GameStop had YEARS to adapt themselves to the new gaming situation, but they instead chose to go the way of the strip-mall and follow the example of BlockBuster Video. When did Steam get started? The middle-naughts? That was the time for GameStop to act. It's too late now. Even if they have the money, do they have the leadership to pull this off? Maybe they'll try, but it will be an uphill fight, even with the Chewy…
There's still a way with video game streaming.
Can a brick-and-mortar dinosaur (with a lot of temporary money) just buy their way into being a Steam competitor? I doubt it.
I was thinking recently about how GameStop might pivot. They have retail locations, which a lot of companies don't, so they should take advantage of that. Some examples I have thought of include: * put 3D printers in the stores and sell custom objects based off of your gamer profile. * convert the stores into a gamer bar and show eSports tournaments. * host LAN parties or move into tabletop games
Your 1st and 3rd idea, maybe, but they'd be moving into a territory filled with competitors. It's hard to imagine my local tabletop tavern crowd migrating to a corporate equivalent. Gamestop pivoting to a gamer bar seems incredibly unlikely. Retail is not restaurants -- the business logic is all sorts of different -- and likely zoning issues would prevent many locations from suddenly becoming restaurants.
I've talked to several owners of failed e-sport restaurants. They all say the same thing. It's sad, but also the reason you don't see tons of them around, even if gaming as an industry makes billions of dollars.