The video game store chain GameStop has announced that it will shut between 180 and 200 of its stores worldwide. The news comes after the company suffered from a 14.3% decrease in global sales during its second quarter. That decrease meant the company had a net loss of $32 million for the period.
As a result, GameStop CFO James Bell announced that up to 200 “underperforming” stores will close by December 31 this year. During the company’s earnings call, Bell said:
While these closures were more opportunistic, we are applying a more definitive, analytic approach, including profit levels and sales transferability, that we expect will yield a much larger tranche of closures over the coming 12 to 24 months.
The video games industry is set to go through massive upheaval in the coming years. Physical media is dying and more and more companies are turning to online digital sales and streaming services to sell content. This autumn, Apple and Google will both launch video game streaming services, which will surely eat into the physical video game market. It’s also thought that future PlayStation and Xbox consoles will eschew physical media for digital downloads. If that happens, video game stores could dry up like CD stores did in the early 2000s.
We’ve reached out to GameStop to see which stores will be closing and will update this post if we hear back.
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