All gamers, at one point or another, have felt GameStop’s sting after they cheated you on trade-in’s or while attempting to sell back games. However, this is a feeling that future gamers may not be likely to face, at least when it comes to GameStop. According to the company’s earning reports for last year, made public on Thursday, the gaming retailer will be closing over 150 stores in 2017 due to a poor performance over the holiday season.
This massive store closure across the country is apparently a part of a strategy that the company announced over three years ago. This strategy focuses on closing non-productive stores around the world that they are now only putting into effect. They proposed to close anywhere from two to three percent of their 7,500 locations in over 14 different countries.
Despite these closures, the Texas-based company is continuing to grow. They are planning to open 35 new stores in their collectibles line of stores and 65 new technology stores like Spring Mobile AT&T and Cricket Wireless stores. In the earning’s report released earlier this week, GameStop showed a major decrease in sales of gaming hardware by 29 percent while gaming software was down by 19 percent in its final quarter.
GameStop blamed two major things for their decline in sales this past holiday season. The first reason being that they just couldn’t keep up with the “aggressive console sales” of their competitors Amazon, Walmart, and Toys R’ US. (If their first reason wasn’t enough to blow your mind, just wait.) GameStop also blames the weak sales of “certain” AAA titles. Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, which is usually a big seller for GameStop in particular, seriously underperformed in the sales department amongst other major titles. Sales of this year’s Call of Duty release was down almost 50 percent since 2015’s Black Ops release.
What do you think of GameStop closing its doors? Is this only the beginning of the end for physical gaming retailers? Let us know what you think in the comments below!
