Uh... without those stores you have a lot less sales. People need visibility into what you're selling to actually sell it. These guys have a lot of storefronts out there for people to walk into.
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UK Retailer GAME is dead | Brera's Lament
- Thread starter CrunchinJelly
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Sure, they usually do them in each season, so spring, summer and autumn, then after Christmas obviously. The scale is fine, the prices are lower than usual though.
As an EA rep said to me, Mass Effect and FIFA will sell themselves, but a lot of games don't have that following and tend to rely on people looking at them in a store to get sales.
Psychotext
Member
That applies far more after the first week. I'd wager less than 1% of vita buyers bought one after randomly seeing one in game.
Mr. Luchador
Member
This is it then? Last roll of the dice.
Every GAME store had a Vita for customers to demo. Could have something to do with it.
You all laughed. You all mocked.
But the megaton came as promised! My shares are up 7.76%. We all know they will be posting a loss this year so hopefully I can sell at 7p next week and rebuy at 2p in when the results come in!
Run. RUN to Game you unwashed heathens. Spend your money. Me? I don't shop at Game. I have principles!
But the megaton came as promised! My shares are up 7.76%. We all know they will be posting a loss this year so hopefully I can sell at 7p next week and rebuy at 2p in when the results come in!
Run. RUN to Game you unwashed heathens. Spend your money. Me? I don't shop at Game. I have principles!
Yeah, the guy who was demoing it to me was giving me the sales pitch throughout. I'm not surprised they got the lion's share of sales because of it. After seeing it, I was sold, but I knew to shop around.
Hopefully all sales will be available online. I'm not in the UK, but I'd like to profit from it.
glaringradio
Member
The guy who gave me the demo model to play with told me that it had sold 400,000 units in Japan on its first day, and that I had better pre-order ASAP or else I wouldn't be guaranteed one...
I've never wanted to call someone out on something they've said so badly.
EDIT: Brera's shares have went from 4.3p to 4.6p! £££!
Mr. Luchador
Member
You know why he was bullshitting so badly (other than perhaps he honestly had no idea what he was talking about)?
Because his manager would have told he HAD to get x amount of preorders a shift. Its that kind of tracker bollocks that causes BAD customer service. Tried to fight so hard against it when I was working there, but there's nothing you can do when it comes down from above to your Regional Manager.
grandmastashi
Member
Got back about an hour ago from Game Cheshire Oaks having picked up 10 360 games for less than £50. Generally it's a GAME I avoid as i've found some of the staff in there quite obnoxious over the years, but having worked for MVC whilst that went south I felt I should wish the guy restocking the 360 section best wishes.
Strangely he seemed quite nonplussed and slightly oblivious to the situation GAME are in. He said to me 'buying some bargains?' to which I said 'yep, sorry your head office has screwed things up so bad'. He looked at me slightly confused and replied 'oh you mean the Mass Effect 3 thing? Oh no worries, we'll be stocking EA games again in a couple of weeks and everything will be back to normal. We'll be getting the ME3 strategy guides in for Friday though so I expect people will wait a couple of weeks, I will be'....
I wasn't sure if he was just putting on a brave corporate face or didn't really grasp the scenario. He genuinely seemed like he felt everything's going to be a-ok...
Strangely he seemed quite nonplussed and slightly oblivious to the situation GAME are in. He said to me 'buying some bargains?' to which I said 'yep, sorry your head office has screwed things up so bad'. He looked at me slightly confused and replied 'oh you mean the Mass Effect 3 thing? Oh no worries, we'll be stocking EA games again in a couple of weeks and everything will be back to normal. We'll be getting the ME3 strategy guides in for Friday though so I expect people will wait a couple of weeks, I will be'....
I wasn't sure if he was just putting on a brave corporate face or didn't really grasp the scenario. He genuinely seemed like he felt everything's going to be a-ok...
MarshMellow96
Member
Some Vita games would be nice as no one has the hardware to buy them for.
Not expecting much, however...
Not expecting much, however...
glaringradio
Member
Yeah, I'm aware of that. I've worked in GAME before and I know exactly the kind of shit you're expected to do on a daily basis. It was the exact attitude of the guy who handed me the machine that put me off placing a pre-order there and then.
checkeredknight
Member
Bayonetta is £2.98 hot damn. Gears of War 2 is £1.98 (IIRC.) Darksiders is a fiver too, very tempted to grab it (since I've never tried it before.) Some awesome bargains in the "fire sale" so take advantage of it whilst you still can! It's a pain to have to change all of the stickers, though.
Some good bargains, although the Liverpool One store had only discounted 360 games so far, so going to have another look tomorrow. I had some of the games that were discounted, ended up getting Blazblue and DMC4 for £1.98 each, and the Bulletstorm strategy guide for the huge price of 1p.
ScreenSplitter
Member
Agreed. I was a Christmas temp and I didn't get past the temp phase because I didn't bother with the excessive sales pushing.
Worst thing about it? My manager was a real dick... and you could see him go from a stern face with me to sickly sweet schmoozing the customers into buying a case, screen protectors, and car charger for their DS. Totally unrelated, but he eventually got transferred for texting naked pictures of himself to younger sales assistants. True story.
ScreenSplitter
Member
Cardboard circle cut out from the back of a cereal box with "I.O.U" written on it in biro.
If they're shitty they'll have to refund them.
Mr. Luchador
Member
haha you'd think so right?
They'll take it as a chance to flog you the disk repair service for £2.
ScreenSplitter
Member
Which they have absolutely no obligation to charge for and will do it for free if you kick up enough of a fuss.
It depends entirely on the store you buy it from. If the staff have been good, the discs will be good. We for example will check a disc at trade-in, charge for repair if necessary (£1 off trade-in price) and then when the transaction is over it will be repaired ASAP.
We tend to go a bit further and also check any pre-owned stock that gets sent by Head Office.
Finally when we're getting games out to sell, we'll also check the discs in the boxes or before putting them in boxes, and repair them there and then before selling them, just in case any got through the previous checks.
As you can imagine, we very very rarely get any pre-owned games returned faulty
frankie_baby
Member
Seems to me like game pumped every penny they had left into the vita launch and left themselves no money left to get anything else in which seeing as how much of a damp squib the vita lainch was it was most definately the wrong move, i was in the cheltenham branch last week and starring with dispare at the tiny 3ds section, i asked one of the staff why so few games and he said "oh well there arent many out yet only about 30 games" i counted the sum total of 29 games, but there will be soon he said telling me about metal gear and kid icarus i mean not exactly likely they'll get either of them
Elsewhere in the shop i could see them trying to take down the mass effect 3 preorder display and they still had preorder boxes for mario party 9 and tekken 3d (even though the latter came out the week before but as usial these days game forgot to bother paying to get the game in)
Elsewhere in the shop i could see them trying to take down the mass effect 3 preorder display and they still had preorder boxes for mario party 9 and tekken 3d (even though the latter came out the week before but as usial these days game forgot to bother paying to get the game in)
Azure Phoenix
Member
Bayonetta is £2.98 hot damn. Gears of War 2 is £1.98 (IIRC.) Darksiders is a fiver too, very tempted to grab it (since I've never tried it before.) Some awesome bargains in the "fire sale" so take advantage of it whilst you still can! It's a pain to have to change all of the stickers, though.
Tell me about it, almost everything in our store has changed in price. We only just finished about half an hour ago. And "fire sale" seems an apt term, practically everything that wasn't COD seemed to be getting a £1.98 sticker slapped on it.
Lol.
That bad huh? I'm not looking forward to tomorrow at all - unless I can find some bargains myself.
N
NinjaFridge
Unconfirmed Member
How long does it usually take for PSN codes to be sent out?
bitoriginal
Member
Think I'll take a stroll into town tomorrow and try and grab me a bargain.
Azure Phoenix
Member
It depends on the store stock, practically everything you'd consider an old/niche game is £2.98 or less - for example Stranglehold and Dark Sector are 98p, Alpha Protocol and Forza 3 are £1.98, Lost Planet 2 and Bayonetta are £2.98. Old but mainstream titles like Crackdown 2, Dragon Age 2, Shift 2 and such all occupy the £4.98-9.98 bracket and then there are a few odd surprises like Gears of War 3 at £12.98.
Same! I hope I'm not too late. Is it 9 o'clock they tend to open?
But a lot will be being sold at a loss...
It's not funny anymore.
checkeredknight
Member
We had quite a few £7.98's and £12.98's for the newer stuff. Final Fantasy XIII-2 is £24.98 pre-owned, which is a very decent price IMO. I'm off tomorrow for my birthday; maybe when I get back on Friday there will be nothing left. Don't want to miss out on the cheap games myself. :X
glaringradio
Member
I think if I was ever to meet you in real life, I'd be able to convince you to give me all the cash in your wallet in about 60 seconds.
It's sub £25 new from Zavvi and ShopTo.
Huw_Dawson
Member
I'm not sure if I could get away with a Y U NO image on GAF, I've not been here long enough. Double-checked the etiquette topic. But I think Brera is trolling and people should ignore him if they disagree with his opinion.
Anyway, I might pop into Aberystwyth Game tomorrow and see what's up there. It's a very small store but maybe there'll be a nice deal or two.
checkeredknight
Member
True, but high street prices are always a little bit more expensive. I think £25 is fantastic for an in-store price of a AAA title that came out only a couple of weeks back.
zomgbbqftw
Banned
It would be if they had written down their inventory at the end of the first half, but they didn't and now a paper loss turns into a real loss and while the cash part of the balance sheet may rise to around £70m the inventory column will crash to less than £60m as stores and warehouses empty out, that will leave the company more than £50m in the red in addition to the £21m loss that they had already predicted.
Anyway, that's all a side issue, I spoke to the RBS guy again just now and he was pretty adamant that if no investor or buyer comes along before the end of March they are calling in the loan because the government will have passed the finance bill and there won't be any chance that RBS will be forced into forgiving the debt to save the company (which seems to be the strategy chosen by the board). RBS are worried that if they pull the plug before the budget then there will be calls from MPs to save Game and for RBS to "act in the public interest" as a government owned bank. Ministers don't want this and neither do the RBS management. If RBS wait until after the budget then it won't matter because the financial pages will be chock full of new info and statistics that Game going bankrupt will be relegated and MPs won't have any leverage over Ministers to not pass the Finance Act.
Little Old Man
Member
Many other guides about in there?
There were others, but I don't think there were any at 1p, it's just luck really. The Bulletstorm guide was bundled with the game on PS3 but as I already had the game I asked how much the guide was on its own, it scanned at 1p. Tried the same for the Rage guide but that was £4.99. Quite a few others were marked at £4.99 in Game (Gears 3, Halo Anniversary) and the newer ones at £9.99. Gamestation had the Gears 3 guide for £2.99, Rage guide for £2.99 and the SWTOR Explorer book or whatever it's called for £4.99.
Azure Phoenix
Member
You got very lucky with the 1p guide, when they hit that price they are written off the system and are meant to be pulled off the shelves immediately.
Ah I guess it was a one off then! Wondered if it was one of the products to get marked down in the sale. Could it have been anything to do with being in a bundle but just buying the guide as I didn't need the game?
You're not too bright are you. While zomgbbqftw has most things covered I did ask a friend who subscribes to a paid investment site and got all the figures available for GAME Group and they don't make pretty reading. Aside from a pre-tax loss of £50million for the first 6 months of 2011, their liabilities to assets ratio is way beyond what would usually signal danger for a company. Their equity is currently worth £16million, which for a company with such a high turnover is pathetically low.
Administration is imminent, they shares may wobble but there is no silver bullet. The company is going down and a fire sale is a sign of desperation and only undermines any long term future for the current board.
Interestingly, there have been quite a few share purchases by directors if the information I seen is correct. The only thing I can think is that the directors are hoping to show stronger cashflow to convince the likes of Gamestop to buy out their equity (And take up the debt themselves) rather than waiting for the company to enter administration. I doubt that will happen, but it's interesting nonetheless.
Shotgun Kiss
Member
Bought a few things in the sale. There are some pretty good deals.
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