GameStop Stock keeps going up no end in sight

As much as I love all the electronic discovery / delivery ...

I do also miss walking into a store, perusing, and getting a box with a manual, some floppies and later CDs. Or the Master of Orion strategy guide, which really, was an opus.

<rocks in chair, whittling a stick, talking about the good ol days>
 
I have not been to a GameStop in probably 4 years. I used to get cheap 360 games but the 360 has been gone from my collection since probably 2018. The one I used to go to is literally a ghost town and it was a very new store at the time I stopped going. I go to the harbor freight next door fairly frequently
 
As much as I love all the electronic discovery / delivery ...

I do also miss walking into a store, perusing, and getting a box with a manual, some floppies and later CDs. Or the Master of Orion strategy guide, which really, was an opus.
I do too, I do like physical games... but that said I'm one of the people who contributed to it going all electronic because while I like them, I rarely buy them even when it is an option. The convenience of buying a game and having it in minutes is just too much for me, also combined with all the frequent sales on digital platforms.

That's really what it comes down to, and why physical is just going to continue to decline. Downloaded software offers a convenience that physical can't, and we Americans love our conveniences, and can more easily support sales since there's less overhead.
 
As much as I love all the electronic discovery / delivery ...

I do also miss walking into a store, perusing, and getting a box with a manual, some floppies and later CDs. Or the Master of Orion strategy guide, which really, was an opus.

<rocks in chair, whittling a stick, talking about the good ol days>

Same here, there was something different about going and buying the game, opening it and installing vs just digital. Suppose its the physical aspect of the and box and discs we miss where you could see where your money went, vs a download.
 
I do too, I do like physical games... but that said I'm one of the people who contributed to it going all electronic because while I like them, I rarely buy them even when it is an option. The convenience of buying a game and having it in minutes is just too much for me, also combined with all the frequent sales on digital platforms.

That's really what it comes down to, and why physical is just going to continue to decline. Downloaded software offers a convenience that physical can't, and we Americans love our conveniences, and can more easily support sales since there's less overhead.
Oh I'm guilty as well. I can buy a game, launch the tool, and overnight the game is ready (we don't have fast interwebs here). The alternative is to drive to a store where they don't actually have it, or when they do - the box is nothing more than something with a download code in it.

I do miss all the little accoutrements. Infocom games would come with a bunch of stuff to sell the story and world. Ultima, and other RPGs would come with big maps.
 
Oh I'm guilty as well. I can buy a game, launch the tool, and overnight the game is ready (we don't have fast interwebs here). The alternative is to drive to a store where they don't actually have it, or when they do - the box is nothing more than something with a download code in it.

I do miss all the little accoutrements. Infocom games would come with a bunch of stuff to sell the story and world. Ultima, and other RPGs would come with big maps.
I do miss them as well, and there is also just something fun about having the box. Though to be honest as my game collection has grown, keeping the boxes gets harder and it would be completely impossible with all the stuff on Steam.

Likewise, it gets better and better as the 'net gets faster. I have gig fiber now and man, even huge games are done in an hour or less, most are done in 10-15 minutes. The instant gratification just makes hard to want to buy any other way.

PCs have already gone that way too, like I just rebuilt the core of my PC and I got a high end, large, case, the kind of thing that would have plenty of room for an optical drive, and yet it has no slot for one. Clearly not something people are asking for. You can see the consoles dipping their toes in it too with things like the PS5 with no disk version.

As 5G cellphone networks make high speed Internet available to more and more people I think it'll only increase. People will just get used to downloading games, and companies will just stop selling physical copies entirely.
 
People will just get used to downloading games, and companies will just stop selling physical copies entirely.
Maybe (I imagine already the case for pc games), but maybe there would be some vinyl like movement of collectible with something physical that are more than artwork, book and figurines, but that fake or not has some bit of the game on it in a physical way
 
Maybe (I imagine already the case for pc games), but maybe there would be some vinyl like movement of collectible with something physical that are more than artwork, book and figurines, but that fake or not has some bit of the game on it in a physical way
Perhaps. I think less likely because another part of vinyl is the snobbery that somehow analogue is better. At the very least it is different. Because of the nature of the medium and its limitations, you have different sound because of the higher noise, RIAA EQ curve, and other things and mastering has to be done a bit different to not have too much needle deflection. So better or worse, you get a DIFFERENT experience with records.

You don't get that with a game, it is the same bits, running on the same system. It would be like a CD vs download, and notice that while records have made a resurgence, CDs are not thus far.

I'm not ruling it out, but I suspect it won't be a big market.
 
Maybe (I imagine already the case for pc games), but maybe there would be some vinyl like movement of collectible with something physical that are more than artwork, book and figurines, but that fake or not has some bit of the game on it in a physical way
Have you seen that bands are releasing CASSETTE TAPES now? I understand the vinyl enthusiasts but who the hell enjoyed using cassette tapes?
 
Perhaps. I think less likely because another part of vinyl is the snobbery that somehow analogue is better.
True and that why I cannot imagine what it could be, will probably be purely books, arts, figurines with some at best download key would it be a number of some form of NFT.

Have you seen that bands are releasing CASSETTE TAPES now? I understand the vinyl enthusiasts but who the hell enjoyed using cassette tapes?
I knew someone quite in the electro-strange music that was getting tapes of "bands" that were making only 100-200 cassette tapes and no one made it available digitally to keep it special, and they were giving reason about it outside hispterism, about being simpler to make them than burning cd for some reason.

Annapurna made VHS version of someone recent movie I think has well and looking for which it seem there some scene of people that make their own VHS tape of movies they love, with the custom case and everything.

That why I feel like there will be an effort for some physical medium, but as a game always bound to end up digital it is hard to know what it would look like.

Maybe like nintendo 64 cartridges, the game come with its own small FPGA that run all or part of it in a specialized made for the game hardware, for some small indie-arcade type games, maybe making possible very low latency or something. Flash memory-compute chips could become cheap enough to make a $90 game in a cartridge possible again.
 
I think I'm going at a decade now, I forgotten who they were, EB, Software Ect, or both.
Gamestop started out as Babbage's. Software, Etc. was the first to be swallowed by Babbage's as they waged war on all their competitors.
 
Have you seen that bands are releasing CASSETTE TAPES now? I understand the vinyl enthusiasts but who the hell enjoyed using cassette tapes?
I don't have an operating CD player, but bought many signed CDs from the artists I like in the last few years.

I suspect most people doing this are just supporting their talent, and with a fun nostalgic twist.
 
Gamestop started out as Babbage's. Software, Etc. was the first to be swallowed by Babbage's as they waged war on all their competitors.
Yep, knew Babbages owned them, I remember there was a SWE in the back of a Babbage's, through a single door wide entrance at the old Eastlake Sq Mall in the Tampa Bay area in the 80's. Felt like it might have been their tiny stockroom or office IIRC.
 
Gamestop is an Ecommerce property now, with a full online store for gaming and nerd stuff with NBD shipping in USA, so a lot of those store locations are used as mini distro centres, but I don't think it's branched outside of the US in that way...
 
Gamestop is an Ecommerce property now, with a full online store for gaming and nerd stuff with NBD shipping in USA, so a lot of those store locations are used as mini distro centres, but I don't think it's branched outside of the US in that way...
Gamestop is EB Games outside the US and they do the same thing.
 
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