Local Game Stores going out of business

[bikingjahuty]

I was recommending game stores to Justin8301 on his thread when it dawned on me that a lot of the local, independent game stores in my area have gone out of business in the last year. Off the top of my head there have been 6 total in the last year within about 40-miles of where I live. This may reflect that I live in the 2nd most overpriced housing market in the country, which is also reflected in retail rent prices too, but I'm also wondering if this may have something to do with the current state of the retro game industry, or I guess the modern game industry as well. I know Gamestop has been struggling for a while as well.


What are your thoughts?

[pizzasafari]

I've been seeing this for about a decade, I think it's the changing market personally. It's part of why I hate digital games, because they're undermining the smaller game shops that didn't make much money to begin with. On top of that you've got the big publishers doing everything they can to undermine the secondhand market and it's training certain people to believe that buying a game secondhand isn't worth it. While I was growing up I remember there being at least 3 game shops in the town I grew up in, now there are none. When I first moved to the city I live in now 6 years ago there were 4 game shops here, three big ones and one small retro game shop, now all that's left is two big game shops. The small retro game shop that went under could't afford to stay open and the bigger one was a chain that went out of business. The next town over lost one recently too when the shopping centre it's in got bought out and AFAIK it wasn't able to move somewhere new, I don't know why that was though.

It's sad as hell, but I don't know if there's anything we can really do about it.

[98dgreen]

There used to be 2 video game stores in my county now there is just one.  The one that closed did so because they were only open twice a week and was in a town with 5000 people.

[shfan]

A lot of the troubles of game stores seem to stem from there being very limited profit in selling new games and things like playstation plus cards netting them a few pennies per sale. My local game store (still several miles away) is run by a veteran who used to operate tens of stores, but now they have one. This store, however, not only sells new and secondhand games, they also specialize in retro and imports as well as things like yu-gi-oh cards and Games Workshop. Another thing they do is take anything 'geeky' in as trade-in - if I went there with a box of lego for instance I'd be able to trade it in, they do strategy guides, disney stuff, plushes, star wars, Dr Who, action figures/figurines, soundtracks, anything and everything. Because they take stuff in trade there's a steady flow of new (second hand) stock which they can make profit off, they also get people travelling from miles away for the imports. I think trade-in is too important these days to not be good and wide-focused on it.

[badATchaos]

The few stores in my area diversify by selling other stuff like Pops figures.

[Flashback2012]

There was a mom n' pop shop in the mall near me that closed up but he's still around up at the flea market. A different vendor in that same flea took his gaming stuff and used it to open a stand alone shop. I've not been to the shop yet as the guy tends to be pretty high across the board on everything. Plus it's farther North of where I'm at.

I've actually been seeing more people trying to open new shops for games/comics/toys in this area.

[dreama1]

It's not unique to game stores. A lot of local shops are going out of business.  Perhaps most gaming stores just migrated to being online stores.

[NickAwesome]

My area still has plenty of stores but that's because retro gaming is pretty popular in Portland.  We have had a few stores go out of business recently but that was because of their shitty business practices. 

[kashell]

There are two game stores, and one used media store near me. All three of them seem to be doing well. Hopefully it stays that way.

[tripredacus]

The craze is over, at least to the level were it is viable to have a retail store selling old video games. I stopped going into the local game shops because they no longer get any inventory refreshes. Basically, they aren't bringing in games. The product that moves for them are the modern systems like Wii, PS3 and the current stuff.

And because retail shops do not react fast enough to the market conditions, once the overall market started to drop 1-2 years ago, they did not follow suit. So then they are still trying to sell video games with prices from 5 years ago. This is why they go out of business.

The local game stores near me have not been closing per se. They are shrinking. All of them had multiple locations and they are not making enough money to keep them all open. So they are closing up extra stores. The ones that seem to last are the ones in malls, as most stores are able to pay for their year's lease just by sales from the holiday season. Places in plazas are a different story altogether.

[mark1982]

Yup, noticed this trend too in the past couple of years. Few independent game stores around my area have been closing down, only the major chains are still around which is a bit sad to see because they only carry modern games.

The one retro store in my area had to close shop, owner said he's making a career change of selling insurance since the game business just didn't cut it anymore, I wished him the best of luck and let him know that I will always have fond memories of his game shop, he smiled and told me that's what really counts. Great guy.