Wednesday, June 20th 2018
GameStop is Talking to Potential Buyout Firms
GameStop, which is one of the largest video game retailers, confirmed that they are in discussion with third parties for a potential buyout. To facilitate that, they have hired a financial advisor to help navigate talks. Who they are talking to and in what stages these discussions are was not revealed. The equity firm Sycamore Partners, which among others is invested in Staples, does seem interested in buying GameStop.
The company operates over 7,200 stores in 14 countries, and has been plagued by bad news recently. They had a data breach last year and had to shut down more than 100 store locations. With a net loss of $106 million reported for the year 2017, their stock has slid over 30% bringing the company's worth down to $1.4 billion.
Source:
Reuters
The company operates over 7,200 stores in 14 countries, and has been plagued by bad news recently. They had a data breach last year and had to shut down more than 100 store locations. With a net loss of $106 million reported for the year 2017, their stock has slid over 30% bringing the company's worth down to $1.4 billion.
19 Comments on GameStop is Talking to Potential Buyout Firms
Gamestop is good for buying old games. I hope they don't end up like Funcoland
Remember those HUGE newspaper like lists of games they had for sale? Oh man the memories!
On a side note I was debating @cadaveca the other day about the state of gaming and how publishers were screwing up......he said I was just getting old lol.
ANYWAY SEE DAVE! SEE!
1 - physical copies are not cheap anymore. Wholesales in web stores like GOG and steam have long beaten it.
2 - physical copies of old games used to be really cool, with graphics, comics, included soundtracks, and all sorts of goodies. Today? you get a pathetic disk\ online download code and that's it.
Games like Destiny, CoD and Battlefront have done a lot to ruin customer confidence in the industry. The industry really needs the next "Skyrim" or "Call of Duty 1" right now or I fear its only going to get worse....and no not just a shitty remake.
This has worked for me countless times, paying 25-35% less than if I bought on Steam, Origin or Uplay.
I'm sure stuff like that doesn't help..
Plus GameStop charges to much for something you can get at a far better price everywhere.
GameStop has been a train wreck for awhile
Year on Year growth of more than 10% averaged between all segments of the market... yeah that customer faith is really going down the drain :p Take special note of the almost precisely equal footing of console versus PC: 33.3bn versus 32.3bn, with 'browser games' in sharp decline as the only segment in there. If anything that shows that 'serious gaming' is on the rise, and/or that casual gaming is moving away from PC and into the smartphone/mobile platform.
There are many industries jealously looking at the growth in this marketplace and almost none of them can match it. Gaming is larger than the movie and music industry combined.
2017
2016
If it was as unstoppable as you say than Gamestop wouldn't be looking to sell off. Also places like Walmart would be looking to expand its gaming sections. NONE of this is happening. We are ending in the console cycle and the PC is nothing but ports and indie junk. People who don't care about games and care about money tend to sell things that don't make them money. Hence Gamestop is being sold. Gamestop is being sold because the market is not only in retreat but expected to keep going.
Gaming isn't dying. Never said it was. I said publishers are losing audience with bad decisions and the market is reacting. Gamestop is a casualty.
Meanwhile the numbers don't lie with 10% YoY growth for gaming as a whole and even though the biggest growth happens on mobile, even PC game sales are still up YoY. Perhaps the only thing you see is that 'growth' is slowing down a little bit. And that is just a simple case of market saturation rather than a retreat. You don't 'lose audience' when the volume of sales still rises.
Don't mistake your own perception of the market for what's really going on... A great example of that (in general) is the yearly CoD release where 70%+ of the comments tell us 'avoiding this' and yet the franchise sells extremely well every time.