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GameStop CEO Says Games Are "Irrelevant" To Company Revenue (insider-gaming.com)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/nottheonion@lemmy.world
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[–] 155 points 3 months ago (10 children)

“Software, it mattered in the past. Software today makes up less than 12% of the business, and collectables makes up over half the business. So, it’s totally, totally irrelevant.”

12% of your business is no way anywhere near "irrelevant."

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  • [–] 35 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    It depends on what that 12% is.

    Is it revenue, or is it profit? And does that Include both new and used games?

    New games have a very small profit margin compared to used games and merch.

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  • [–] 16 points 3 months ago

    Fair but it seems like if you're trying to minimize the importance of something you would choose the metric that shows how minimally important it is.

    If it's 12% of revenue but 1% of profit wouldn't you say it's "1%" instead of "12%"?

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  • [–] 9 points 3 months ago*

    Might even mean 12% of business transactions/goods sold. The profit margins, customer retention, market stability, minimal losses etc might be in other goods favour.

    Given how many codes/games/etc a store might order that do not sell (losses to account for), games are much less 'shelf stable' compared to a plushie of a pokemon first shown on TV 25 years ago. Digital codes and registering also make any return/exchange obligations a bigger loss.

    I think there's several reasons a company might see games as a high-risk good when compared to collectibles.

    I just wish they hadn't destroyed ThinkGeek.....

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    They’re not going to stop selling games, it’s just gonna be code cards now. They’ll still work out deals with the publishers for exclusive sales, and of course they’re still going to be selling consoles and handhelds.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (1 child)

    It's going to be irrelevant, why bothering going in a physical store and get bombarded with upsells to get a GS+ subscription for getting just a download code that can be downloaded from your couch?

    Download codes are the reason the PC section in all game stores is missing or extremely tiny

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago

    Because not everyone has or wants credit cards. Children can't get credit cards. Code cards are also useful for gifts.

    I think you are right that even less people will buy them than physical games, but I don't think they will be irrelevant.

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    • [–] 177 points 3 months ago (15 children)

    To be fair, GameStop has essentially become an overpriced merch retailer.

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  • [–] 72 points 3 months ago (9 children)

    I’m honestly surprised they haven’t merged with Hot Topic.

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  • [–] 51 points 3 months ago (8 children)

    They did buy out ThinkGeek, so... very close.

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  • [–] 38 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    😭 🥀 God I wish I had gotten more of those novelty homewares while I still could. I'm an adult, I accept I need a laundry basket.... but nobody else would've sold me a collapsible radioactive waste barrel.

    I enjoyed the 'bloody handprint' shower curtain, but by the time I had enough money to get such items as yhr matching bloody-footprint bathmat with intention, ThG was gone for good.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    I still miss the ThinkGeek of old, back before they even had stores.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    a few weeks ago I went into a Gamestop just to see what's new, I hadn't been in one for a long time. Holy crap their stuff is way overpriced. I looked at the Gunpla kits and the prices even for old High Grades were insane. They had Master Grades for nearly $200. It's cheaper to just import the stuff directly from Japan. And the games sections were slim to none. I was also the only one in there at the time. I honestly don't know how this company is still going. who buys that crap?

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Let me know where you find master grades shipped from Japan for less than $200 lol. Not defending GameStop but everything in this comment is a gross exaggeration. I was in a GameStop last week and half the store is games and peripherals just like it has been for years. Sure that means half the store is stuffed animals and trading cards, but "slim to none"? Why lie about this? It's weird

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  • [–] -1 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    yeah...hobby link japan. they're less than $100: https://www.hlj.com/search/?Page=1&GenreCode2=Gundam&MacroType2=Master+Grade+Kits&MacroType2=Master-Grade+Kits

    are you mental? why lie about gundam models being more than $200 buying online? why lie about this? it's weird.

    idiot.

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    • [–] 60 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Coincidentally, GameStop is also irrelevant to Games.

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    • [–] 78 points 3 months ago (29 children)

    Idk why everyone is making fun of this. Sony made it very clear that games are going all digital. Gamestop has to take it seriously and they have been pivoting to collectables for a while now, so they are clearly on top of this. Maybe the pivot works, maybe it doesn’t, but they aren’t just sticking their head in the sand and pretending everything is fine.

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  • [–] 28 points 3 months ago (27 children)

    GameStop is currently making a serious effort to buy eBay, which would also give them TCGPlayer and station them as a pretty big fish in the collectible card gaming space.

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  • [–] 27 points 3 months ago (23 children)

    It's funny to me that the same crowd of people that rail against the continued fucking over of the public by manipulative corporations are the same people who fork over hundreds of dollars for the artificial scarcity and manufactured demmand of collectible cards.

    Every time I think of getting into that hobby, I get the same feeling I get when I go to the casino... like I'm just a mark.

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  • [–] 12 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    Oh, yeah. My playgroup all gave up on buying official products years ago for that reason. Now we just buy cardstock and toner.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (3 children)

    How long do your homebrew cards last? It's hard enough to make good cards at home that I think CardsAgainst Humanity has them publically available since it's still cheaper for them to print than you would spend for a small batch.

    And how do you keep your decks from being overpowered?

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  • [–] 7 points 3 months ago

    It's tough to comment on how long they last, because it's going to depend on how often you play. So I started proxying 4 years ago and haven't had any problems yet, but I also sleeve them as though they were genuine, and only play maybe one game a week.

    As for avoiding overpowered decks, I've been playing with the same group of guys for nearly 25 years. We've worked out where we like to be, and self-balance for fun. It helps that I'm a total Johnny, so I can whiff a game completely and still have fun as long as I "did the thing."

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    If you're just asking how to avoid overpowered decks just because of the ability to print proxies, people with big budgets (or a long history of playing) can get all those actual cards already and there's banned and restricted lists for each format (and the formats themselves also help, as they limit which sets are legal, so standard doesn't have to worry about interactions between new cards and every single card made in history).

    And for more casual games (that ignore ban lists or allow custom cards), there's the whole dynamic of "if I always play my deck that just stomps everyone by turn 2, eventually no one will want to play with me, other than to throw their overpowered decks at it, so I'll save the extreme ones for special occasions".

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago

    It's such a controversial opinion, but outside of playable games etc... people are basically buying (with 'collectibles') the equivalent of bacon and eggs arranged in a happy face to make a kid giggle. What the fuck are people doing with their lives where they need to have a picture of some cartoon character or a bobblehead of it?

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  • [–] -4 points 3 months ago (16 children)

    Listening to a lady named Freya India who is talking about this exact same kind of cognitive dissonance.

    The left hammers the points of anti-capitalism but go into debt for regular Disney vacations or high end brands, Taylor Swift Tickets, and more.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    I don't think most people on "the left" are doing those things in the numbers you think they are.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Yeah that doesn't sound like the left lmao. The American left, whom the whole news-enjoying slice of the population believes to be the left? But which other countries consider right-of-center? Yeah, must be that "left".

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (1 child)

    Young people don't watch the news anymore because they either don't want to hear about politics or they don't trust the news for politics. I don't even know any old left wing people that watch the news anymore.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago

    Yeah, my point is really that all those news media convince everyone that liberals and Democrats are left wing, but they are far from it. Hard to imagine why any actual politically left (I.e. not "American left") person would watch that stuff, it's all propaganda.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago (9 children)

    I don't know that name, certainly not their content, but this sure sounds like the perennial "avocado toast" non-argument to somehow associate young people being (predictably) broke and foolish with, ya know, caring equally for human beings and wanting our society to make that a primary goal.

    It sounds like hateful trash, is what I mean. What "left" is this person describing, I wonder?

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (8 children)

    The interview was not a financial discussion and was not about the debt itself but lack self reflection that the things they like most contradict the values they grandstand. That they mouth one set of values but live out another set of values that are less likely the ones they will give up, push come to shove.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (7 children)

    Ah okay. Sounds like an attack on liberals then, which I heartily support lol.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (6 children)

    Oh yeah? Why is that?

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (5 children)

    Because they thoroughly fail to understand the world, their own position in upholding much of what is fucked up and awful about it, generally refuse to educate themselves about how and why that is because it means the difficult recognition of their own complicity, and then are often super arrogant toward basically anyone, including folks who know a whole lot better than they do, about almost anything, politically.

    So that's the charitable take, for the libs who are basically kinda decent internally but just super ignorant and unwilling to learn or sacrifice. The ones who consider themselves already "on the right side of history", and who think that is the hard part - having already done it, they are ready to answer questions from others and be congratulated!

    a further rant, lolI have less generous takes for the "leaders" among such, who of course behave cynically and don the robe of the compassionate and therefore de facto less effective "half" of the very serious people duking it out.

    Liberalism is failure, for money. It is the compromising, co-opting, and controlling of the energetic forces that could propel our society, by pretending to represent the same needs and wills of those who would otherwise successfully fight our hellscape. To keep Big Business, doing big business.

    Liberalism is a smiling death that peddles its ever-thinner wares as being the best there is, even while ushering the fascists and hate-mongers to the clearly better buffet.

    Liberalism was this way for the literal Nazis, too. So you don't have to take my word for it 🤷‍♂️

    Anyone who wants to help people, must look further left than liberalism. And the sooner the better.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (4 children)

    I enjoy you. I was considering calling you PolarKaren, but you have earn your way out of it.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (3 children)

    I don't really get it, though I def acknowledge I have a tendency to randomly kind of hop up and start saying a lot of what I think, here.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (2 children)

    I would do it if I were just trolling.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (1 child)

    I finally get it lol! Your typo was "you have earned..." where I could only see "you have to earn..."

    Anyway cheers (from the Just Over Here Doin A Good Job At Lemmy department)

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago

    To address the posts about what "left" is being described - Freya India is specifically addressing young women who fall into a social progressive category that don't yet understand the businesses they "like" are not on their side and are taking advantage of them. The types who may say they want "socialism" but as far as they know socialism means things like being against Trump or just nice social sentiments. Not understanding that they really like capitalism and the things it affords them. The kind who have no idea of policy but will watch 30 political tiktok videos and thing they know something now.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago*

    I watched some of her videos on Newpipe, where it seems like Freya India is an EXTREMELY popular men among older conservative men that want women to get married and start bearing children (preferably Christian children).

    I appreciate that she sees the rot in modern culture, but I think she's mistaken when she associates it with "the left" and her prescription of returning to the status quo ante of traditional gender roles isn't going to fly with most people.

    Time for my daily Britt Hartley mention. Remember that scene in Platoon when the new recruits pass the returning veterans on the runway? Well, Britt Hartley is the returning veteran to Freya India's new recruit. Britt was raised very mormon and inculcated in traditional gender roles and struggled to escape.

    Some of Brtitt's videos that might be part of this conversation are the one about why women want to become tradwives. I hear Freya validate a lot of what Britt says for she mentions anxiety as a big motivation for her to return to traditional values. Britt's whole thing is analyzing existential anxiety, and, yeah, the modern age is rife with it, and returning to traditional values is one antidote (though it comes at a cost, obviously).

    But, again, I do appreciate anyone that might validate what I think the core truth of our age is: "Being well in a profoundly sick society is no sign of health."

    Feel free to link Freya's video, the one you're talking about, and ignore the downvotes. Thanks for sharing.

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  • [–] 11 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Serious as viewed from GameStop's perspective, and maybe even just one man at the top. eBay has already said their offer is not remotely attractive to them. I think their current CEO unfortunately thinks the only way to run a business is to create controversy. I hope they didn't take the wrong lesson from the Gamestop stock rally, but it seems at least one person did.

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    • [–] 23 points 3 months ago* (1 child)

    Likewise, CEOs are irrelevant to game quality.

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    • [–] [S] 42 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    Game? Stop!

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  • [–] 12 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    No, money down!

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Where's that from again? Somehow I hear Will Arnett saying that.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 months ago

    That quote is from the Simpsons, though Will Arnett's character had nothing to do with that episode

    30 Rock had a similar bit. And again, Will Arnett guest starred in that show, but not in that episode at all.

    DOTCOM: Hey, Tray! We just picked up your birthday party invitations from the printer!
    TRACY: Wait! What is this? "Give to charity, please, no presents"?
    DOTCOM: Yeah, that's what you told me to put on the card.
    TRACY: No, Dot Com! I said, "Give to charity? Please, no. Presents!"

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    • [–] 34 points 3 months ago* (10 children)

    They honestly could just become a merch store and only carry plushies, shirts, other nick-nacks and hardware. The one nearest me is already pretty much just an authorized dealer of FuncoPop garbage as is. I'd be more inclined to visit if they carried other general video game related stuff so I wouldn't have to wait for shipping.

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  • [–] 14 points 3 months ago (5 children)

    Do people go to gamestop specifically to buy merch, though? I always thought that that was intended like candy in the check-out aisle: you grab it because it catches your eye on the way out, after you've already collected whatever you actually came in for.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    Might as well go all in on this. Merch and toy stores are popular for kids so i don't see why they won't do this. I don't know why Western companies are so afraid to branch out from their "core competencies" and fighting tooth and nail to keep the rotting corpse of their previous business models. Japanese companies have been branching out from their initial business models since forever. Nintendo used make card games but is now a videogame behemoth. Fujifilm went from photography to biotech. Sony recently eked out into finance. This branching out is why Japan has some of the oldest companies in the world because they value long term survival. GameStop could do the same by giving up on their old business model and embrace selling merch and toys instead.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Do they have the same private equity system that we do in the States?

    I feel like it's been years, but wasn't GameStop sort of a victim that somehow survived? I may have that all wrong.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (1 child)

    Japan definitely has a different system but I'm not sure what the specifics are. But i can tell that Japanese companies have different philosophy than most companies across the world. They are not nearly as greedy as most companies and the fact that they are willing to pivot to a different field than they started with shows they are willing to spend the upfront hefty cost of switching to a new field, even if it cost profits in the next quarter; if this leads to survival in the next couple of years. I kinda like that because I loathe the short term-ism of most companies, especially Western ones.

    GameStop had been bought to keep it afloat. I think it was going to be sold for bankruptcy to make the new owners rich but i think Redditors coordinated to buy shares or something so that it won't go to bankruptcy or something like that. I could be wrong though.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago

    i think Redditors coordinated to buy shares or something so that it won’t go to bankruptcy or something like that. I could be wrong though.

    Close enough. DeepFuckingValue was either the one that caught on to or was the public face of a concern that noticed that GME was extremely short sold which roughly means that they sold shares they didn't own with the notion that the share price would drop. Then they could buy the shares needed to cover the ones they shorted and make money. Selling short can have theoretically infinite losses, btw. The internet noticed...

    So people flooded in and bought shares, call options, whatever, with the thought that the stock price would go up because the short sellers likely took out loans to cover shorting the shares, and the people that loaned them money don't find cases of infinite losses/risk nearly as funny as the old wallstreetbets.

    Some brokerages halted buying GME, and DeepFuckingValue got to testify in front of congress.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 months ago

    That's basically Hot Topic, Box Lunch and a bunch of other similar stores that sell nothing but licensed merch. Only instead of Harry Potter, Disney, and a handful of popular shows it's video game properties.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago

    That was basically the case for most GameStops in Germany before they closed down for good nationally a couple years ago. You still had your games, of course, but like 80% of the customers we had came for merch. Funkos, shirts, other memorabilia.

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    • [–] 15 points 3 months ago (8 children)

    What happened with them being a meme stock?

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  • [–] 13 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    They leveraged the market cap to stay in business and become a generic gaming related things retail/scalper hybrid.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Ceo (who the cult worships) did like 4 huge stock offerings and diluted the float around 300%. Any moass short play is dead but a lot of them are sunk cost fallacy trapped.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago*

    The stock is still undervalued, that's all that matters.

    Moass or not, people are investing in Cohen, and the man is a genius. He's taking GameStop from strength to strength.

    You can argue with all the data supporting the moass thesis, but you cannot argue with the excellent fundamentals. Especially in this economy.

    Imo, it's free money regardless.

    Edit: to add aswell, the fact they're gearing up to acquisition eBay is a huge deal.

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    • [–] 28 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    I guess they're just "Stop" then.

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  • [+] 10 points 3 months ago (3 children)
    [deleted]
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    • [–] 27 points 3 months ago (6 children)

    What the hell even is our economy anymore?

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  • [–] 16 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    Memes, mostly. Lots of memes.

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