GameStop Stock Worth $5.13...But Only Worth 7cents In Store Credit

Gamestop should buy Gamefly.

Best place to buy board games, hell just go to Amazon.

Tarrant said:

I thought you liked Gamefly lol

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Haha

From a business perspective and market I see the following:

1) Internet caps (Which do not seem to be changing) and an ever increasing stream/download pool (And downloads are getting a lot larger) are going to force people back to physical unless that changes.

2) System manufacturers will continue to drive digital, that's a given, but the infrastructure and policies of ISP's will hamper that. (And aside from input latency, this is why cloud gaming will never take off.. Bandwidth caps and throttling)

3) Physical will therefore still need to be placated for the forseeable future.

4) Rental services for physical will increase.

Obviously that goes out the window if someone in government says, "No. You cannot monetize bandwidth caps and throttle" - of which they will just increase their prices to compensate but people still will not need to worry about caps - hence, digital it becomes.

Now aside from digital games, audio/video freaks like myself will still be wanting physical movies for pure lossless uncompressed dolby atmos tracks. Problem is people need to start renting 4k movies, even Gamefly still doesn't do this.

Rental markets are going to see an uptick in my opinion due to ISP companies and their clamp down on bandwidth, in which 1tb didn't seem like a hurdle 2 years ago, but I guarantee you those ISP's new this was coming, and they are going to try and capitalize on it. This will have a market shift in my opinion due to costs.

So, while used games go down the toilet because of digital sales, downloading 4 games a month will chew up 60% of a user's bandwidth cap, and streaming easily will surprass that in 4k from whatever service is being used, and the first thing people will thing of is buying physical games to save on their caps. Hence, rental market. And then if anything, just keep them 3 months down the road for half the price (or same price as a digital sale) and be done with it.

Nola said:

I used to work at EB games and my good friend who was the store manager use to always go to Vegas and come back with free shit to give it to us. I use to like how employees being able to rent games and always be the first ones to get them days before release. EB Games was a good company until Gamestop took them over. I never worked under Gamestop but the ones I knew who worked there hated it.

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I worked for Software Etc as a kid - the check out program was hilarious. We had a shrink wrap machine in the back room and would just check out 1 title on the shelf, copy it (on PC) and just reshrink and sell it as new. I even was able to check out video game systems.

And then we would get upset when someone came in to buy Peachtree for $299, we knew they copied it and would return it the next day

I still do BB but I still have GC until April of this year (Finally expires that sucks) so I'll probably still buy there though when I do for rewards.

Utnayan said:

Haha

From a business perspective and market I see the following:

1) Internet caps (Which do not seem to be changing) and an ever increasing stream/download pool (And downloads are getting a lot larger) are going to force people back to physical unless that changes.

2) System manufacturers will continue to drive digital, that's a given, but the infrastructure and policies of ISP's will hamper that. (And aside from input latency, this is why cloud gaming will never take off.. Bandwidth caps and throttling)

3) Physical will therefore still need to be placated for the forseeable future.

4) Rental services for physical will increase.

Obviously that goes out the window if someone in government says, "No. You cannot monetize bandwidth caps and throttle" - of which they will just increase their prices to compensate but people still will not need to worry about caps - hence, digital it becomes.

Now aside from digital games, audio/video freaks like myself will still be wanting physical movies for pure lossless uncompressed dolby atmos tracks. Problem is people need to start renting 4k movies, even Gamefly still doesn't do this.

Rental markets are going to see an uptick in my opinion due to ISP companies and their clamp down on bandwidth, in which 1tb didn't seem like a hurdle 2 years ago, but I guarantee you those ISP's new this was coming, and they are going to try and capitalize on it. This will have a market shift in my opinion due to costs.

So, while used games go down the toilet because of digital sales, downloading 4 games a month will chew up 60% of a user's bandwidth cap, and streaming easily will surprass that in 4k from whatever service is being used, and the first thing people will thing of is buying physical games to save on their caps. Hence, rental market. And then if anything, just keep them 3 months down the road for half the price (or same price as a digital sale) and be done with it.

Click to expand...

Data caps are going to go the way of the dodo. Streaming services are here to stay and only swallowing more and more of the physical market. Competition is way too intense for companies like Comcast to continue throttling/caps/etc. Sure, they still employ it because they are only worried about short-term profits and squeezing what blood they can get from the turnip now, but even in my podunk town there are three different providers and none of them have data caps. Just 8 years ago the number of providers in this area was one.

Then you also have cell-phone companies, which are extremely competitive. So, if cable companies don't get off of their asses and stop trying to fuck consumers, people will start swapping over to tethering as an alternative. After that, you have Papa Musk who likely isn't far off from being able to deliver hi-speed, wireless internet to large portions of the country who have 0-1 options.

Physical media is dead. Just like disco, VHS, DVDs, Blu-Ray, etc. Sure, you'll get your fucking physical hipsters (hi2u vinyl) and geezers who think physical is like...so much better maaaaan! But, that small segment of the population isn't enough to keep giant, physical media companies like Gamestop around. They're barely enough to keep your local record store and "retro" video-game store afloat. Because while they may think that physical is the bees-knees, guess how they most often choose to purchase that piece of physical media? Yup...digitally.

Digital is here to stay.

Century link in my area does unless you get fiber. Charter cannot enter my area. So it's either Comcast or Century Link.

Also When the FCC approved the merger of Charter, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House into the single brand of Spectrum, it ruled that the new provider couldn't charge overages or impose data caps for at least seven years. that's the only reason why there are no caps. Doesn't mean its going the way of the Do Do.