Game/Gamestation

[El Wayneo]

By that same logic HMV are too late because they havent rivaled iTunes.

Lolz, don't watch the news much?, HMV had to borrow £500 million to get new more profitable products in, so yes they are too late as they are struggling to pay it pack, they've planned to sell off Waterstones and the HMV institutes that they own to pay some of it back, so yes they will eventually go, one of the women i used to work with now manages a HMV store and they have to bank the cash twice a day now instead of twice a week to gain what little interest they can.

thanks for making my point.

[theoriginaljez]

By that same logic HMV are too late because they havent rivaled iTunes.

Definitely, and noone has any chance of rivalling them now. On the plus side if you like buying games on the high street you'll get to keep HMV for as long as the record companies keep bailing them out and that could go on for quite a while

[DeadEyeDuk]

By that same logic HMV are too late because they havent rivaled iTunes.

To echo the two above posts, that is EXACTLY what has happened to HMV. They have been ousted by online music, dvd and game companies, because HMV.co.uk is pants

[Tracker]

Ermmm, how long did it take them to start distributing digitally? a long time, they dropped the ball and people have there preferred options now to purchase games.

Yes, it took them too long to start doing it digitally and they now have to play catchup, this is something that will hit home now and it's no different to woolworths, they're still around as a digital website y'know. The only reason say.. Argos hasn't already gone the same way is because of the practicality of being able to just pick things up yourself rather than wait for deliveries.

and it's exactly my point.. GAME were ok until Steam showed up.. now you have steam, a bunch of similar portals like Green man gaming, PC's are alot more download friendly than they used to be and people don't really buy physical copies of PC games anymore.. it's going the same way with consoles now with xbox live / ps store really taking off now.

You can get all the add ons from play or amazon

with special editions and such, i was referring exclusively to console games NOT pc games, y'know, with all the GAME exclusives and such? Amazon have only JUST recently started getting exclusives and things, but for the most part special editions and things like that have only been GAME (often pre-arranged exclusively), the question is will this mean that places like amazon will start stepping up and taking over that sort of stuff, or will it dissapear? the only special edition's you used to find on amazon would be ones sold by private sellers via Amazon, and this made them alot more expensive / hard to get ahold of.

i don't see the point of saying you won't be able to get special editions when you say yourself they only sell one or two retail copies as it is.

you've taken me out of context, they sell plenty of retail copies of Console games, both the regular and all the various deluxe editions, they don't stock many pc games but even then, the pc special versions are available, if not as a digital deluxe download as seems to be common these days, again PC is just the odd one out at the moment being that it's online framework is alot more developed, and the consoles are only now starting to catch up.

"I see it as a good thing that i can go to Tesco/Asda/Sainsbury and get a game while i do my shopping and they all do launch day specials which GAME doesn't."

again, Tesco staff aren't going to know squat about any of that, it might not be an issue to you but you'll find hell of alot of purchases, particularly in christmas and other seasonal periods, are made by adults, alot of whom won't have the know that someone like you or I might have going in.

"Is common sense really."

Now? yes, which is why GAME is in trouble, a year or two ago? things were alot better for GAME, but now other retailers are moving in it's time to adapt or die, you can't pretend that it's been the exact same situation for 3-4 years, because it hasn't, full retail console games now available on download through portals, retailers selling games as a loss-leader to get you into the store to make profits from your other purchases, places like amazon acquiring their own set of exclusives with games ( such as Gears of war 3 and the amazon only character skins, at the time were on ebay for £5 each), a poor consumer spending climate and dwindling sales of PC games plus being at the end of the console lifecycle ( which will renew sometime next year when the new generation of consoles are announced) are all forming a perfect storm which could spell curtains..

and if you think it's a case of selling things cheaper, then you should take a look at what happened to Best buy last year opening up in the UK, they were cheaper than ANYWHERE by far (from GAME to PC world to Tesco), had way more stock / supply and variety.. they shut down again just before christmas last year, and Best Buy is HUGE.

[Frenchy]

Lolz, don't watch the news much?, HMV had to borrow £500 million to get new more profitable products in, so yes they are too late as they are struggling to pay it pack, they've planned to sell off Waterstones and the HMV institutes that they own to pay some of it back, so yes they will eventually go, one of the women i used to work with now manages a HMV store and they have to bank the cash twice a day now instead of twice a week to gain what little interest they can.

thanks for making my point.

That wasn't my point, my point is that if you are predominantly a retail business, you don't and shouldn't have to switch to being a download business. The whole thing with games and music being bought less from shops now is not mainly due to iTunes, it is mainly due to illegal downloading. If we were to somehow stop all illegal downloading, I am almost certain that iTunes and HMV would quite happily survive along side each other, its been shown in the past that actually online downloads (legal ones) don't actually affect in store sales all that much, and in some cases actually it has an advantage in that online allows people to discover new music which they then go and buy in the shops.

The point I made about HMV still stands, they are not too late to the market with downloads since downloads is a completely different type of business, they unfortunately have fallen due to every individual who believes they have a right to thieve music and games off the web.

[El Wayneo]

Illegal downloading is a different discussion altogether really.

If you could stop people from illegally downloading on the internet then places like PCS would be out of business as no one would make games for the PC as sales are soooo low anyway and the developers rely on console sales to make any money at all.

But we digress, most retail companies who sell media are going to either go bust altogether or disappear from the highstreet, i rarely shop in a shop at all now.

Massive overheads, high prices and to an extent piracy will finish them off.

[Frenchy]

Illegal downloading is a different discussion altogether really.

If you could stop people from illegally downloading on the internet then places like PCS would be out of business as no one would make games for the PC as sales are soooo low anyway and the developers rely on console sales to make any money at all.

But we digress, most retail companies who sell media are going to either go bust altogether or disappear from the highstreet, i rarely shop in a shop at all now.

Massive overheads, high prices and to an extent piracy will finish them off.

I dont see it as a seperate discussion, it is the main reason that we end up having this discussion. As for the whole PC game illegal downloading thing, thats complete nonsense, yes consoles bring in a massive margin now however PC games are still a massive money maker, both for large and small developers. If it wasnt then steam would deffinately have gone bust by now.

[theoriginaljez]

That wasn't my point, my point is that if you are predominantly a retail business, you don't and shouldn't have to switch to being a download business. The whole thing with games and music being bought less from shops now is not mainly due to iTunes, it is mainly due to illegal downloading. If we were to somehow stop all illegal downloading, I am almost certain that iTunes and HMV would quite happily survive along side each other, its been shown in the past that actually online downloads (legal ones) don't actually affect in store sales all that much, and in some cases actually it has an advantage in that online allows people to discover new music which they then go and buy in the shops.

The point I made about HMV still stands, they are not too late to the market with downloads since downloads is a completely different type of business, they unfortunately have fallen due to every individual who believes they have a right to thieve music and games off the web.

I'm sorry but, as much as that's the official BPI line, even they admit it's a load of rubbish. Piracy is neither as prevalent or as damaging to volume as they make out - yes it's a problem but digital sales are increasing massively over the last few years both in singles and albums. There's also quite a lot of hushed up evidence that people who pirate lots... buy lots. but that's another debate. HMV have tried to reposition themselves endlessly in the last 5 years or so - focusing less on music, more on games. Then less on games and music and more on technology... now they're realising that none of that worked. Their live business (MAMA Group) is probably being sold off, they sold off Waterstones, their digital offerings have been a constant and unmitigated disaster... when HMV finally go under, piracy won't have killed HMV, poor management will have killed HMV.

[Rakk]

If you could stop people from illegally downloading on the internet then places like PCS would be out of business as no one would make games for the PC as sales are soooo low anyway and the developers rely on console sales to make any money at all.

This may be a derailment of the thread, but that makes no sense whatsoever I'm afraid, surely if people were downloading it all illegally then at that point no games companies would be making producing games for the PC anymore since it would provide no revenue, games companies don't generally produce games to get them illegally downloaded

[El Wayneo]

How is it nonsense??

Take Call of Duty, regular sales of over 20 million on consoles and about a tenth of that on PC, even the greatest game of all time allegedly BF3 sells millions on consoles and a tiny amount on the PC.

You think developers are going to put all that effort for tiny sales figures on the PC??

Take Crysis, one of the most torrented games ever, the sales figures only look good now that its been on sale for 6 years and at massive discounts in the latter years, if it made soooo much money why make Crysis 2 for the Xbox??

Then you have the steam hardware survey that shows all these gaming PC's yet tiny sales figures, hmmmmm i wonder.


While we at it, maybe we should stop people buying terrabyte hard drives, who actually has that much legit data??


Steam won't guy bust as it sells so many older games on the cheap and was pretty much the first for what it does, origin wont compare at all really.