Comet and Walmart battle for Game Walmart and Comet have emerged as bidders for troubled high street games retailer Game. The US retail giant is rumoured to have offered 12p per share for the company, while Comet owner OpCapita is also believed to have expressed an interest in acquiring Game, MCV reports. Paying 12p a share would value Game at £40m. But no …
12p a share?
That'll learn them for offering me a £5 credit on a brand new sealed and unopened Skyrim that was a Christmas gift that I already had. (no receipt)
"Yes but your shares are now pre-owned and we can only sell them for 20p".
AC because of the pro-retail anti-nord trolls.
Well, they were taken over for a token payment and I imagine they would either shut the Game stores and bring the brand into Comet or they would keep them open and maybe sell a few TVs in there?
But to be honest, downloading games just like downloading movies and music is the way it is going. If second hand goes too it's a loss of quite a bit of sales.
In my town the independent game shop closed, Woolies is no longer with us, Game and Gamestation look like going which leaves pretty much HMV and Argos.
I was in my local Game yesterday, they've cut a lot of prices to the bone. There's a lot of crap in there but some good finds in the second hand games (DOA Paradise PSP for 48p, Advance Wars DS 98p). The boy just picked up Blops (presumably for 360) for a tenner...
When the diskless nextgen consoles come out what are these companies going to sell? My understanding of Game and Gamestation is that a lot of their revenue is from pre-owned stuff which may well be non-existent on the new breed of boxes.
You can only eke out a living on pre-owned last-gen for so long... :o(
I went in a couple of days ago to use up some loyalty points before they are voided by any administrator and found the company's helpful member of staff. Unfortunately they had little for the Wii on the shelves and even when I selected some used games, after searching in the back, could not find the disks for them, which was frustrating, and embarrasing for the chap who had tried really hard.
I'd urge anyone thinking of getting stuff, particularly with credit, to hurry on down. Now I just need to find somewhere with a used Black Ops that doesn't require buying over the internet. I like shops.
Had the same issue the other day - £10 on the loyalty card, picked up some psp games all pre-owned, and the guy couldn't find the UMD for one of them. However, he then just pulled out a brand new sealed copy of the game and scanned it through, then said "there you go, happy gaming!"
Anon, because I wouldn't want to get the guy in trouble...
What risk would the publisher's be taking in supplying stock to Game? This isn't a furniture store where the value is in the stock. The value is not in the 0.5p plastic disc or the 1p box it sits in. The value is in the IP of the game and the key/license to play it, surely? If game goes under the publisher can just rescind the license keys supplied and they have lost virtually nothing.
Bassey, GAME doesn't pay for its stock until long after it gets it, it buys it all on credit. This is normal in retail, but most expect insurance to ensure they don't get stiffed.
Insurance companies are currently thinking twice about insuring this credit, meaning if there is no insurance, and the comoany goes down, the supplier gets stiffed.
Yep the practice of re-selling things second hand must be stopped... it's a nasty business buying a second hand car (or even 3rd, 4th, or 5th hand car even) when we can all go and buy new cars.
We're all evil for buying pre-owned.
Yeah right... I don't buy that many games, I very rarely buy new games, but if I do it'll usually be a sequel to a game I've bought pre-owned that I really want (for instance I bought Uncharted pre-owned when I got my new PS3, then bought Uncharted 2 new on Plantinum and then pre-ordered Uncharted 3). However with EA being such arseholes about it, I doubt I'll buy another EA game new (not that I really like that many EA games, the only one I do like is Burnout Paradise and I got that free with my XBOX 360 in a bundle, the only other game I've bought from EA was Mirrors Edge and that was crap (well okay, I liked the idea of the game but the controls were crap).
Rob
Not really a fair comparison comparing the second hand car market to pre-owned games.
When I go into Game and try to buy a new copy of a game for £40 and get offered a pre-owned instead for £37 what do you think is happening? Do you think this practice is helping the development of bigger and better games?
It's fair enough buying preowned games for a fiver or so when they're a couple of years old or whatever, but when game allow you to pre-order pre-owned games don't you think they're taking the piss?
Or perhaps you'd rather all the devs went bust - then you wouldn't have to buy any EA games, or any one elses either - but as long as the guys who own GAME have filled their boots - who cares.
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