Englishmen, where do you buy your videogames?

P

Patrick Bateman

Member
I recently spent some time in London and to my surprise I didn't even see one videogame-store.

I also visited Harrod's and was surprised that their videogame selection is just a tiny corner with prices that are way too high.

We mostly were near the Tower of London, Piccadily Circus, Trafalgar Square and St. Paul.

Do you just buy everything online or were those just the wrong places we looked?

When I was in London 10 years ago I thought that I saw way more videogame stores.
And those were at similar locations we visited this year.
 
everyone buys online. amazon or shopto (I don't like shopto though)

sometimes from game.co.uk when they have exclusives. http://store.nintendo.co.uk/home.dept has exclusive nintendo stuff sometimes too.

If you're actually going out to real stores, ironically toy stores (smyths, toys r us) tend to have the best selection. Supermarkets (tesco, sainsuburys etc) sometimes have good deals on AAA games as loss leaders.

Also RIP Game Focus, RIP CEX rathbone place being good
 
Amazon, and from time to time, CEX. CEX is normally the only retailer worth going to, everything else can be found much cheaper online.
 
You need to go away from the very expensive retail letting units to get to the GAME stores etc.

But generally I rent - don't buy
 
Generally online. There's a Grainger's in my city that's decent though.

I avoid GAME and CEX like the plague.
 
When it comes to buying videogames over here, online is the way to go. 99% of the money I spend on gaming is spent online. Stores rob you blind over here. The price disparity is terrible, plus we don't have many options.

There's CEX, GAME, some indie stores and then supermarkets. All of which are far more expensive than shopping online at Amazon, TGC, Shopto etc.
 
Mainly Shop to.

They don't have a great rep on here, but they've never let me down personally. Games always turn up a day or two before release too.
 
Jam_Sandwich said:
You need to go away from the very expensive retail letting units to get to the GAME stores etc.

But generally I rent - don't buy
Click to expand...

I thought of GAME and Gamestop. Just to have a look. But we couldn't even find those..

IdreamofHIME said:
Maybe you should have tried Oxford street, a street for shopping rather than tourist spots?
Click to expand...

We were at Oxford Street, but mostly it looked like there are clothing stores etc.
 
I live in London and I mainly buy my games electronically from Steam/Xbox Store. If I need to have a physical copy of the game, I just buy it from Amazon.
 
Amazon and SimplyGames. Retail prices are mainly way too high, unless by a miracle GAME are doing a special offer.

Also ShopTo was great a few years ago, but when they started branching out to electronics and other stuff the prices for games seem to have increased. So I no longer order from there. I was a Gold member back in the day.
 
Amazon, ebay and charity shops generally. I sometimes venture into GAME on the hunt for underpriced valueable games but most of their stuff is incredibly overpriced, they don't even sell sealed games and just chuck brand new discs into display cases.
 
There used to be a Game, HMV and Blockbuster within a 15 min walk of my house but they've all closed down.

I use Shopto these days but if I guess if I wanted to go out and buy a game I'd have to get it from Sainsbury's or Tesco.
 
The English don't buy games, they're too busy being boring. Fun countries like Scotland, Wales and N.Ireland buy loads of games from a variety of high street and online retailers and this is why people from the Europe and beyond actually like them.
 
Sometimes amazon, mainly tesco or sainsburys, might as well get the club/nectar points when buying. Not only that easy to get the game when doing food shopping rather than go in to town to an overpriced smelly GAME store.
 
can't speak for london but i am from the UK. i buy mostly digital now but if i am buying physical then it will be amazon. sometimes Tesco sells games cheaper so I get them there instead. i haven't bought a game from GAME since 2007.
 
I try to mostly buy my games and consoles from my local independent store, bit more pricey sometimes but it supports small business... also I tend to get games/consoles early as well, so it's not all bad.
 
Henke said:
The English don't buy games, they're too busy being boring. Fun countries like Scotland, Wales and N.Ireland buy loads of games from a variety of high street and online retailers and this is why people from the Europe and beyond actually like them.
Click to expand...

When I was in Scotland earlier this year I noticed a few gamestops and HMVs, thus I was astonished to not find them in England.
 
Admittedly I'm part of the problem, spending almost all of my gaming £'s online, however it is disappointing that so many of the brick and mortar shops are disappearing. I used to really like hunting for retro gems in the back street independent stores that were fairly common in my town 10 - 15 years ago, sifting through eBay listings on the sly during your lunch break doesn't really have the same appeal.

Edit : Retro Game Base (http://www.retrogamebase.co.uk/) is quite a nice little shop if you are close to Streatham.
 
Henke said:
The English don't buy games, they're too busy being boring. Fun countries like Scotland, Wales and N.Ireland buy loads of games from a variety of high street and online retailers and this is why people from the Europe and beyond actually like them.
Click to expand...

You can also order the deep fried version of most games north of the border.
 
On the high street there's not a huge amount of choice any more: Game, CEX, Grainger (who are regional), as well as small sections in your typical Tesco, Sainsburys, PC World, etc. Best places to shop are online like Amazon, The Game Collection, ShopTo, Rakuten etc.
 
Amazon....

All the good shops are dead now, to be fair they were killed by GAME/etc, not by Amazon. Now a combination of Amazon and supermarket game sections are killing GAME.

SImple - prices and not many people are interested in retro/used/imports anymore. About 18 years ago even the small city I live in had an import shop, it was the size of a shoe box but I appreciated it being there.
 
Patrick Bateman said:
I recently spent some time in London and to my surprise I didn't even see one videogame-store.

I also visited Harrod's and was surprised that their videogame selection is just a tiny corner with prices that are way too high.

We mostly were near the Tower of London, Piccadily Circus, Trafalgar Square and St. Paul.

Do you just buy everything online or were those just the wrong places we looked?

When I was in London 10 years ago I thought that I saw way more videogame stores.
And those were at similar locations we visited this year.
Click to expand...

The only dedicated nationwide gaming Brick and Mortar retailer left is GAME. Everything else went out of business or was bought out by GAME. There is Grainger but they aren't everywhere especially in the South.

As GAME is way overpriced I use online retailers such as Amazon UK, The Game Collection or 365 Games.
 
Patrick Bateman said:
When I was in Scotland earlier this year I noticed a few gamestops and HMVs, thus I was astonished to not find them in England.
Click to expand...
There are hundreds of HMVs in England, and hundreds of Game stores which are effectively the equivalent of Gamestop. Any reasonably sized town or shopping centre (mall) will usually have at least one and often both.

They are both far more expensive than the online retailers, sometimes by up to £20 for new releases. I mainly buy from Amazon.
 
I live somewhere, where you can't buy most games. Apart from at Tesco, and even then they never get stuff on release.

So, I use Shopto. Regardless of their reputation, I've never had a problem with them and I get next day delivery.
 
Don't even bother with Game. Amazon, the game collection, and simply games are great online stores. Sometimes the big supermarkets will have decent deals too.
 
We have a game and cex in our town. I find supermarkets to be cheaper on new releases though which is where I go for most of my games.
 
Please forgive the self promotion, but I tirelessly watch over the UK market, and chronicle all the best deals across all formats on my website SavyGamer, might be of some use.

Outside of the occasional good price on a new release at a supermarket, all the best deals are online/digital.
 
It really depends what I'm looking for.

For current gen I shop at Amazon/Simply Games and very occasionally Game stores.

Last gen it's either CEX or Grainger.

Retro stuff from Grainger Market, Retrogames.co.uk or gamesworldbodmin.co.uk
 
I mostly rent via Boomerang (joined in 08/2014 and have saved saved approx £1,667), but when I do buy I do so online (Amazon and eBay) and digital. (EU and US PSN and Steam.)
 
Online almost exclusively, though I have on occasion bought new from a supermarket.

As for second hand and old shit, there's Game and cEX I guess, but I still go online for that. Or this awesome shop in Canterbury if I'm over there for some reason.
 
Usually game as i have alot of money on gift cards and reward cards plus i trade in games

I like being able to buy a game and have it immediatly in my games
 
Patrick Bateman said:
I recently spent some time in London and to my surprise I didn't even see one videogame-store.

I also visited Harrod's and was surprised that their videogame selection is just a tiny corner with prices that are way too high.

We mostly were near the Tower of London, Piccadily Circus, Trafalgar Square and St. Paul.

Do you just buy everything online or were those just the wrong places we looked?

When I was in London 10 years ago I thought that I saw way more videogame stores.
And those were at similar locations we visited this year.
Click to expand...

Yeah, you were mainly at the tourist traps. There are plenty of Game stores in London but they are mostly in the shopping areas outside W1.

It's true there are few Game stores in central London any more, but London is huge and the bits where all the common tourist attractions are aren't where struggling retail chains rent shops any more.
 
dedicated videogame shops died late 2000's, game only stuck around because they were one of the bigger names, HMV still sell games but they shrunk down a lot since their tumble a few years ago.

gamestation, at.jacarta, EB and other videogame stores went the way of the dodo.
 
Due to high rental costs (especially in the centre of London) and pressure from online the games shop really doesn't exist anymore as it used to in London (I remember Electronics Butique on Oxford Street). As others have mentioned CEX (which does films, hardware and games - second hand generally), supermarkets and chains with a big presence seem to be where most people get them from. However, outside of London, it's a different story - where I currently live in Stroud, Gloucestershire we have a couple of independent games retailers (who also do films) and a CEX.
 
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