GameStop has record second quarter profits

hot half nekkid chick user pics...what was i reading?

Just because they don't have a game you wanted in stock THE DAY IT CAME OUT doen't make them evil it just makes them SOLD OUT. That's why there's this great thing called Consumer Choice that allows you to check and see if another merchant, like Target, has the the product you want. If Gamestop was the only place that sold video games and they never had any then maybe your "they are evil" gripe would be applicable but since that's not the case I'll just look at it as one of many small life anoyances for you will face.

Actually my experience at Gamestop is good. I like shopping there because the employees (some) actually know some thing about games. I went to get bioshock the other day (LE PC) and they had plenty left. The guy was really nice, and even mentioned that if my figure was broken that I can get it replaced on 2k's site. He did not give me any bs about reserving. I think it just depends store to store.

And how is that evil exactly? They only had enough for the reservations... so how come you didn't reserve it? There is a reason why they ask you if you want to reserve anything today. And god forbid that you had to drive all the way down that street to pick up a game that is mostly likely going to be "Game of the Year".


Yeaa... evil... Right.

Gamestop purposely orders only enough copies to meet the preorders so they can encourage people to put down money months in advance which they can then use to generate interest.

The purposely buy low ammounts, they don't care if you go to target cause they are gonna make more money on their used editions of the game weeks down the line.

Gamestop is evil. I heard however they are trying to implement some of the better things about ebgames since they bought them up and customers much prefered eb to gamestop. I hope they make some positive changes.

If you hate GameStop so much, why even go there first at all? And if you are going to bitch about them being sold out, that's why you reserve, so you wouldn't have had to go to Target to buy the game and waste your time and gas to go to another spot. People who claim to hate GameStop yet still go there are hypocrites, and should actually just try another location if you don't like the people. There are two near me and I go to one over the other due to the people working there.

if you idiots stopped going to gamestop/eb in the first place, then maybe those idiots would go out of business, and we'd have far fewer idiots in the world.

ehh, i can dream.

Actually, as far as the number of copies of a given game that GameStop (and for that matter all smaller retailers) get is based on the number of preorders, but not just because they're trying to get you to preorder so they can reap the interest off your down-payment. A brilliant idea by the way.

Much of the time individual retailers that aren't big chains like Best Buy or Target will get a much smaller amount of copies of a given game because the publishers will often only send them enough to meet their preorders. They work off of the simple premise that the larger retail chain department stores get A LOT more traffic through them. Which is true. Your local Game Stop likely only has a few dozen customers a day while your local Wal Mart get several hundred, if not thousands a day.

I find it startlingly amazing how much you moronic little conspiracy theorists jump to say that Game Stop is evil and that they're just out to screw they're customers. That's just stupid. Do they probably care more about your money than you? Yeah, probably. Welcome to capitalism. You had to grow up one day and realize that you're not that important. What's the difference putting money down on a game that you're going to pay for completely anyway later? You're not losing any money in this deal. On the contrary, a lot of people who have trouble with money can pay games off a little at a time. I have friends that do that; pay a few dollars here and there until they're done, so that when the game releases they walk right in a pick it up without paying a dime.

In short I think narrow-minded people like Holy Chachi here just can't think of things in an economic sense. Yes, this is a service industry. No, the service might not be 100% what you want it to be. Gamers as a demographic are notoriously hard to please. Problems with individual employees are not the same as problems with the company as a whole. Stop mistaking good business practices for some malicious intent toward their customers you idiots.

Why do you need 4 copies of Halo 3?

Flameofdoom

One for me, the legendary, one for the wife, the collectors (she wanted it instead of the legendary) and 2 for my twin teenagers. As you can imagine, having a family of gamers is expensive. :)

But if you're living in the same house...why?

Yeah that whole 4 copies of Halo thing is kind of crazy. I could see 2...maybe...but 4 seems to be a little extreme and more importantly unnecessary.

Growing up sometime my dad would go through out the house and see that my mom, my sister, and would be watching the same show on tv and ask why don't you all watch it together. I guess as an adult now I've adopted that same philisophy. Clearly as a gamer I know sharing the same copy of a game is not the same as watching a show togther but still. Oh well if it keeps your family happy...

Neebs,
I need 4 copies of Halo 3 because all 4 of us have HDTVs, xbox360's, and xbox live gold accounts. We all play and have our own particular game types that we like. Some games the kids and I do play the same, as well as the wife, such as Halo; we either play over live, or play over our home network. Now if it's a game that odds are 2 or more of us aren't going to want to be playing at the same time, then I don't buy 4 copies. For instance, my daughter is the only other one in the house that likes Gears of War, so I only purchased 2 copies of that game. A lot of games I only get 1 copy because only one of us wants to play that particular game.

"One for me, the legendary, one for the wife, the collectors (she wanted it instead of the legendary) and 2 for my twin teenagers. As you can imagine, having a family of gamers is expensive. :)"

Got married in World of Warcraft, huh?

Must be nice to be rich. Two teenagers, a wifey, and still enough disposable income for a house full of 360's and HDTV's?! Damn!

Dude, that's great that you can do that. But why would you want to? Not to criticize, but looking from the outside it seems a little excessive. Now if you tell me that your kids get high grades, your wife can't keep her hand off of you, and the family is healthy, then you obvioiusly figured out something that many of us haven't.

c:

My kids may be twins, but it isn't apparent in the grades. My daughter is a straight A and my son struggles with C's. So, that's a 50%, the last two are both a resonding yes. I don't think I've really figured anything out, just have been very fortunate in life, and am always thankful.

No, it's not interesting, it's a lie. If interested is generated at the regional banking level when store's make their deposit, then that's incidental of the banking process. They don't just make interest. The money can't stay in the store.
GameStop is far more interested in getting you to pre-order because if you can choke the bile down long enough to be civil, they hope you will eventually roll down into their store.
Honest-to-god, interest? People are reaching.
I propose GameStop leave a burlap sack in their backroom marked "Customer pre-orders", with a bunch of fivers in it.
I really wish hating GameStop wasn't as trendy as it is.

Your description of the situation is absolutely correct, but your judgment of it is not. The profit is made on the license of the game, and if the game is sold back to a store used, the original purchaser of the game no longer owns a copy or license of that game to play, so the commodity has changed hands. EVERY store in the world profits on their service to provide a product to a customer, whether they buy the item from the people who made it or a 3rd party. GameStop is doing nothing different than any other retailer (or eBay user) does in the world of commerce every minute of every day.

This absolutely normal and just practice is nothing compared to the illegal downloading/copying of games, movies, and music for free (including buying or renting a dvd and making a copy), because you do not own the license for what you're using, it remains with the original buyer. So if you've ever copied or downloaded anything without paying for it you've stolen from their creators far more than what is lost by the sales of used games at any store.

Thank you for showing me the light. I just realized last week, when I had picked up an old beatles LP at a garage sale for a few bucks, that I should've actually written a check to Mr. McCartney himself.

Crap, I also hope Namco paid some mad money to Mr. Chopin though for not only using his music, but his likeness in Eternal Sonata. I'd hate for his remains to suddenly burst out of his grave and demand his dues.

You have set me straight. :(

All the license holders need to do is change the agreements to lease. This would then screw Gamestop. They would not be allowed to resell or release the original game agreement. I think that you, the buyer and patron of Gamestop, are the fool. You give them money, ahead of time, that cumulatively, they reap interest (not you), then you lose more when you "exchange" the played title for another, with, applied "credit".
You should just ebay the used games, and screw the middleman (so to speak, as then Paypal-ebay are making a chunk, albeit smaller, from you).
Face it, your support of gamestop only feeds their profits and not the gaming industry.
Gamerploitation must stop!

@Gunner McGrath

I disagree actually with your judgment of the situation. Actually selling used items is in its very nature different than the original. This includes GameStop, used CD stores, pawn shops, flea markets, even your aforementioned EBay says. Triforceowner actually already said why it’s different.

After the first sell of the product to the vender the original manufactorer of the good will not receive anything for resale for that good. This is normal however the problem comes when a customer chooses to purchase a used good versus a new product. The purchase of the new product will inevitably support the original manufacturer while the purchase of used one simply will not. That purchase will help the economy but not specifically the creator of that product.

Triforceowner's point was that since used game purchases don't support the creators of the product and neither do the pirating of games they are equal at least from the stand point of how much they support the original creators. I also think his opinion that buyers of used games would probably have a larger chance of actually buying the product new than pirates is probably true.

@Gunner McGrath
You say, "so the commodity has changed hands" but that is no the full picture. Let's say I won a shop and sell ten copies of a game. Let's say I paid $40 for each copy and sold them for $50. I have made $100. Now, let's say Bob Everyman comes in my store and sells a game back to me for $25. I than proceed to restock that game at a $5 discount. So, if half the original people sell a game back to me, then I make $200 after reselling said games, while the developer only sees the original $40 and nothing more.

How is this fair? We always hear about programmers, artists, and designers not getting their fair share of wages, while GameStop continues to tell us that they break their own records again and again. How is this fair?

Thanks for the support of opinion, Almack. And Hiney, your plan would work very well, but I think the lease thing would have to have a terminal date. A year, three, maybe until the end of a console's lifespan for console games. This would than end any debate surrounding the issue that Strike brought up. It would be OK for me to buy a used SNES game for $5 or a three year old football game for $7, because their lease plan would be terminal.

The basic thing is that I think developers should get their fair share of money and GameStop is literally stealing from those developers, because they receive the money while the developers get zilch after the original copy.

Sorry for the double post later on in this thread.

I agree with Triforceowner about used games, though you can't really single out Gamestop, since there are a lot of places to buy used games.

People buying used games is *much* more damaging to the industry than pirating, especially since pirating is a two-way street. I won't say this always happens or defend pirates in general, but sometimes an overlooked game will become more noticed because someone pirated it and then told other people how great it was. If that person wasn't going to buy it to begin with, than that particular instance of piracy actually helped the game rather than hurting it.

Buying used games is always bad. Piracy can be very bad depending on the circumstances.

Ah, I see it - nice!

The interest issue is a good one. I am always amazed how they want you to preorder any game you mention while there and if you mention none - they start rattling off games to preorder. Hey, wanna preorder Dance Dance Revolution? Uh...no...

Another one I find funny is if the game comes out the next day they ask if you want to preorder it. That makes no sense at all. If you already have your games ordered for the next days delivery, why do I need to preorder it. Wait, why am I thinking about it - I dont need to preorder DDR anyway!

Yes, but if you go ahead and preorder the game the day before it comes out, you still get any special discount. For example, I preordered Gears of War the day before it came out. Well, the shipment didn't come until the day after it was supposed to. They ended up giving me $5 off since it didn't come when it was promised. I'll preorder the day before it comes out, but any earlier than that, you're just basically giving extra money away.

Yes, because 100 gb game downloads are the future.

Seriously, are you daft? You see a company consistently grow and make sick sums of money, and you don't try to get in on this?

I can understand not liking a companies principles, but c'mon, buy some stock and worry about how misinformed you are about a companies practices later.

Think GameStop is evil? Isn't this site owned by AOL?

AOL is definitely a much bigger evil, whats amusing is there are still people that are so fuckin stupid i mean seriously lack any sign of intelligence and still pay to have AOL

You know AOL owns Joystiq, right?

yes i do, but joystiq doesn't try to take control of my comp and act like a virus and expect me to pay for it either.

fascist BS

The pre-order only thing was just a worthless excuse to fill their quota.

lol

Is it too hard to just....order it then?

It seems to be a pretty easy solution for you there.

That's not really a problem with GameStop... there's just too many damn people around these days. :P

Why dont you just go to Target? Target has never failed me on a street date, where Gamestop has several times. Back when I used to shop there, they would say on the website a game would be in on Tuesday, and 50% of the time when I went by the store, theyd tell me that was the SHIP date, the game would be in tomorrow.

Go to Target, and lo, there are several copies on the shelf. Plus the redshirts never hassle you to buy extra crap, or say you cant have it because you didnt pre-order.

Really, I cant see ANY reasons to shop at a video-game "specialty" store such as Gamestop, with the sole exception of perusing the used games for cheap treasure, a la Ikaruga.

What I don't understand, and I will come out and just say it to be honest with you as someone who is...well...heavily involved with the company in question.

Seriously and truthfully, GameStop is not some evil empire that the blogosphere has made you believe. It has just grown a metric f***ton since the merger with EB.

The focus is legitimately on customer service right now. It's a ranked category. You don't like something, voice your opinion at tellgamestop.com

Believe what you want. Joystiq has actually been pretty good about not starting these flame threads for no good reason about GS lately, but once you get the facts straight, you'll realize that there are a lot of good gamers out there working FOR you, not against you.

For the love of God, can people stop using the word "blogosphere"? I hate it with all my being, and it just makes people sound like tools when they use it.

So...a company that plans to expand to 10000 stores by 2010 is just going around firing good employees for no good reason then?

Ever think those people are just...bad employees then?

Seriously, I'm just going to stop, there is no changing how the Joystiq crowd feels about the company, and it gets a little old when all of your hard work within a company that is really a lot of fun to work for is made to sound disingenuous just because Joystiq says so.

Sorry guys.