Is the death of GameStop reversing?
I went into my local LameStop for their Black Friday deals this week and they
- Have new copies of games that are still shrink wrapped
- Had good deals too, in the past their "deals" were on unsellable bargain bin garbage
- Got rid of a lot of gaymur merch and put out more video games. Could purely be to pretend to enforce social distancing but still promising.
There was a lot of people in there, it was surprising. It was because of Black Friday but I haven't seen that store so busy since ~2012.
From what I've been hearing on the pipeline it is still the same, if not worse due to Covid.
They're focusing on this mainly due to the lack of foot traffic in the stores since most stores have a set amount of people allowed in due to covid.
They've drifted away from gutting (Opening a new game, taking the content out, and putting it on the shelf), probably due to Covid, but it's something long overdue. In replacement they've been using new cover art for each of the games, which will hopefully help battle idiots who steal empty game cases in the store thinking they're full with a game inside. However that also cuts hard into employee time if the store isn't organized, and also prevents the employee from knowing what the codes are and how to redeem them if there are any. Since some people are very smooth brain that shop at gamestop.
The main draws I've been hearing that are still bad are employee coverage. To give perspective I was a GA (I shifted down the totem pole because i wanted benefits at Gamestop but didn't want to commit my life to them), and I was still at the store at the time the pandemic made it's rounds in Feb. I was only called into the store ONCE in may, and that was to fill out paperwork for Covid. Past that not a peep despite being on the schedule and part of the company. Meanwhile SL,ASL and two SGAs(Shift supervisors), are handling the stores and their hours are getting sliced and diced because Covid.
The r/gamestop has a lot of posts about saying Cyberpunk is gonna be a shitshow due to hours, and considering how their PS5 units were awful (2 per store on restock), it's still going to be full of bullshit.
In terms of the sales, they do this every year, the only BIG thing I noticed is Nintendo first party games prices being cut. It's usually just stuff like Mario + Rabbids, but seeing stuff like Three Houses get cut is interesting. But that's just the holiday sale flair, but it did make me look into buying FFX-X2 for switch since they got it for just 20 while amazon is going for 35.