Ben-DutkaAs the industry continues to push forward into the digital world, retailer GameStop may have to find new ways of generating income.
One of those ways may include various tech products like smartwatches and music players. They'd take them in trade and sell them as used products, as they do with gaming-related software, hardware and accessories.
GameStop EVP of strategic business Mike Hogan had this to say concerning future growth:
"The value strategy goes well beyond just games. We see significant opportunity in emerging technology products as well."
This might also include other forms of "home tech" such as a Beats Pill speaker system. They've already expanded beyond gaming, accepting stuff like tablets, laptops and smartphones in trade, so taking more tech-oriented stuff is a sensible step. After all, those who love video games are often more into technology than others.
I'm not in that group but a great many others are, of course.
Why can't a business just stick to their specialist anymore? Just look at Amazon recently, 'Amazon Instant Video' 'Amazon Fire TV', I heard they're going to start selling authentic pieces of art soon too… It's just ridiculous. They should change their name to Tech-Stop if they intend to become just a generic tech sales shop.
Last edited by Vivi_Gamer on 4/24/2014 11:24:44 AM
I think cuz they know they will suffer and die when games go all-digital.
Amazon is like an online Wal-Mart. It isn't unusual for big entities online or not, who offer anything from toilet paper, Apple products, Doritos, playstations, and car tires, to provide house brands to compete with popular categories. These usually save the consumer money.
@ WorldEndsWithMe
The day the gaming world goes all-digital is the day all video games die. for me if it aint on disc then i dont care enless its free
That's what PS Plus is for 🙂
A business in growth mode, as they always try to be, is always at risk of losing it's specialty focus. Shareholders want growth.
Now the smaller ma and pa shops just wanting to make a good living… they'll be the endearing companies you come to love.
Well. They gotta do something to survive. I can't blame them for trying. And trying early.
With 20gb to 50gb games this gen as a norm I think a good many will still favor physical for obvious reasons like avoiding massive download waits and storage limitations. Even 500gb hdds on a ps4 could get cramped pretty fast, especially when physical games also dump themselves to your drive while playing.
Last edited by Temjin001 on 4/24/2014 12:11:38 PM
Yup, games have been doing a major suckathon on my PS3 Slim's 1TB, as it's is already down to only about 440GB's & been rapidly dwindling due to all the PS Plus games.
And that's after I already moved all my minis & other assorted stuff onto my old 60 gigger PS3(that's now a 750 GB'er)
Anyway, on side note about my PS3 Slim …….
After 2 weeks of my Slim's Bluray refusing to read any games & BR movie discs, it has now decided to start re-reading them once again for the last 3 weeks.
Weird stuff, I sure hope that it was just a 1-time fluke maybe with the tray set-up itself possibly misaligning, & now that it's realigned itself & it's A-OK
(And I do remember a article right here on our PSXE site(linking to a tech site)way back when before anything about the PS3 Slim's info came out, that a well know & reliable Industry insider(CRS about his name) had leaked info on the upcoming Slims & had stated that to watch out for the Slim to have possible future disc drives failing.)
Interesting. I have a similar problem with my ps3 slim. It on and off again went from acknowledging a game disc to not. At first I thought it was my disc drive dieing. But then the realization later came that it wouldn't load digital games to play either when it was in such a state. This has me thinking it's not an optical drive problem. And if I power on the system with a disc already in the drive and when it chooses not to see the disc then it won't allow me to eject it. If I power on and off my ps3 enough times it'll eventually recognize the disc. But I fear it'll ultimately stop reading discs altogether and ill lose any game in the drive. So now I just don't play it. But I'm getting real hungry for online doa fights…. I might risk it.
I have an outside hope that a firmware update may resolve the issue.
Last edited by Temjin001 on 4/24/2014 2:19:58 PM
Just a further FYI on my own BR drive situation since there seems to be somewhat of a difference between our dual BR problem….
The moment I started having that BR disc reading problem, I went ahead ASAP & checked all my other drives & functions.
Other than just the BR drive itself going wonky at the time, my CD drive was OK, the DVD drive was OK, plus everything else was still working just fine, including all my Digital games too.
Since I couldn't play any of my disc games on my slim, I actually made lemonade out of my sour lemons so I took that downtime to play Rain & about 1/2 of Puppeteer….without any problems what so ever.
one thing i wish phone manufacturers would start offering, trade discounts for new products.
especially mobile phones releasing a new product every 6 months or so.
look at $ony, Z was released around march last year, Z1 7 months later in october, and Z2 in may again 7 months later.
yea you can sell it through online auction houses like ebay but thats becoming such a pain in the a$$ with ridiculous fees, people never paying or taking forever to do so.
id make life so much easier if i could walk into my local testra shop and give them my galaxy note 3 and in exchange get the note 4 for x off.