Video game retailers

[instasis]

There's also the point that their own Black Friday (and subsequent sales) for New Gen were appalling and undercut directly by the online stores on both consoles in most instances, and Game's website was inaccessible for most of the weekend.

[Rowan Morrison]

But on the flipside, I still remember being forced to wear a tight pokemon tshirt even as management, so fuck em.

It's always the t-shirt's fault, isn't it?

[MrPogo]

But everyone's tales were of packed stores with queues out the door. Maybe that was the queue to complain. I'm in 2 minds, obviously theyre a disgusting company populated with many terrible people, but the 2 times i've used them last year (online) they were prompt, efficient, and got me my xmas xbox in time. And it would be harder to buy games without them, choice is always good.

But on the flipside, I still remember being forced to wear a tight pokemon tshirt even as management, so fuck em.

Having queued at Game twice over the Christmas period (once to purchase, once to take it back because the disc wouldn't load) I can confirm the "queues out the door" are because you tend to get whole families standing there together and they're slow as fuck serving at the tills because they have so much sales patter they have to run through. There were physically about 25 people in the queue ahead of me on my second visit, but only four actual "customers" in that number as each had a massive entourage of partners, mates and children. Still took twenty minutes before I got to the front though.

[Rowan Morrison]

If Game staff are obliged to wear tight t-shirts then they should wear tight t-shirts with the words "WOULD YOU LIKE TO PROTECT YOUR DISC IT'S ONLY A POUND" printed on the front, so I can wear one with "NO" printed on it and save everyone some time.

[Dudley]

Chief executive Martyn Gibbs said in the trading update: "Our strategy is to grow customer lifetime value

Well no.

It self evidently fucking isn't.

If it was about liftime value you'd allow your sales people to give honest advice about the games they like.

You'd allow people to, at least once, bring back a 2nd hand game for an exchange if they didn't like it. (Then mark the receipt to stop people taking the piss with it).

You'd make sure you stocked EVERY UK new release.

You'd have imaginative displays like "If you like...<newish release> then try <Lots of 2nd hand ones from the last 3 years that are cheap and similar>" rather than whatever publisher has bought a chart position this week.

And by imaginative displays I mean you'd allow each store at least one full bay to do whatever the fuck the staff want with it. Maybe it's an idea like the above, maybe it's "Steve recommends game x because......".

You'd give managers at least some freedom in the deals. Full swapping is of course not possible because of purchase prices but you'd do what you could. You'd allow managers to build 2nd hand console bundles with 2nd hand games and allow them to give say 10% off the games at least.

All of THAT would be increasing "Lifetime" value because you'd have credibility as a specialist and people would come back. They'd ask what's good. They'd believe you. And they would pay £5 more for a game because they would have some confidence in you and it was a pleasent experience all round.

What you ACTUALLY do is try and harvest every person through the door for as much money as possible on that visit, you upsell them, you push near worthless warranties, you only stock the top 10 new, you force staff to sell predefined bundles, you force staff to have no opinions.

What you ACTUALLY have is an incredibly short term supermarket style strategy and that's madness for a specialist. You know who also has a supermarket style strategy? Supermarkets. Amazon. Shopto. And all of them are far better at it than you are.

Look, here's an innovative solution to the web/store price thing. Offer web prices in store if you're a loyalty card holder who meets a certain minimum spend or purchase quantity every year. THAT'S long term.

Imagine a GAME that offered you web prices because you were loyal, had people who could actually talk about games, offered interesting suggestions on the wall if you went in having finished Borderlands 2 and wanted something similar.

tl;dr - CEO apparently doesn't know the first fucking thing about his own cunting business and I got cross.

[Rev]

Well no.

It self evidently fucking isn't.

If it was about liftime value you'd allow your sales people to give honest advice about the games they like.

You'd allow people to, at least once, bring back a 2nd hand game for an exchange if they didn't like it. (Then mark the receipt to stop people taking the piss with it).

You'd make sure you stocked EVERY UK new release.

You'd have imaginative displays like "If you like...<newish release> then try <Lots of 2nd hand ones from the last 3 years that are cheap and similar>" rather than whatever publisher has bought a chart position this week.

And by imaginative displays I mean you'd allow each store at least one full bay to do whatever the fuck the staff want with it. Maybe it's an idea like the above, maybe it's "Steve recommends game x because......".

You'd give managers at least some freedom in the deals. Full swapping is of course not possible because of purchase prices but you'd do what you could. You'd allow managers to build 2nd hand console bundles with 2nd hand games and allow them to give say 10% off the games at least.

All of THAT would be increasing "Lifetime" value because you'd have credibility as a specialist and people would come back. They'd ask what's good. They'd believe you. And they would pay £5 more for a game because they would have some confidence in you and it was a pleasent experience all round.

What you ACTUALLY do is try and harvest every person through the door for as much money as possible on that visit, you upsell them, you push near worthless warranties, you only stock the top 10 new, you force staff to sell predefined bundles, you force staff to have no opinions.

What you ACTUALLY have is an incredibly short term supermarket style strategy and that's madness for a specialist. You know who also has a supermarket style strategy? Supermarkets. Amazon. Shopto. And all of them are far better at it than you are.

Look, here's an innovative solution to the web/store price thing. Offer web prices in store if you're a loyalty card holder who meets a certain minimum spend or purchase quantity every year. THAT'S long term.

Imagine a GAME that offered you web prices because you were loyal, had people who could actually talk about games, offered interesting suggestions on the wall if you went in having finished Borderlands 2 and wanted something similar.

tl;dr - CEO apparently doesn't know the first fucking thing about his own cunting business and I got cross.

prankster u ok hun xx

[LiMuBai]

I feel sorry for those of you who were 'awarded' the Game loyalty shares last year, but decided not to cash in back in October and have held on to them.

£3.48 a share end of yesterday, £2.32 as of time of posting..

As long as it doesn't drop below £2 they'll still get a minimum £100. I'm still glad I traded mine in in November though, got about £147 back then

[Down by Law]

Martyn Gibbs is the same bloke that while at HMV, didn't stock the Ipod on release because 'he didn't see the appeal in it'

[footle]

Game have a bigger problem which is that all they're really doing is selling hardware for future content sales, which will mostly be made by other companies.

It's not as though the proportion of games bought digitally, or from online retailers, is decreasing year on year.

[Dudley]

To be fair, he was hardly the only one to make that mistake.

[Halo]

And, to be fair, it may have been the right decision at the time. HMV wasn't really in the hardware business and a Mac-only music player inherently had a limited audience.

[dumpster]

To be fair, i was talking to a friend of mine yesterday, an old area manager from Game, and we both agreed that when I left Game (12 years ago) there were a lot of rumblings about digital distribution and the lack of a real need for a shop. Msomeone else I know left about 4 years ago claiming Game were dead because of the impending doom of downloading. It's still not happened.

But what I do see is a shop that hasn't lost its customer base to downloads, but has lost its reason for existing by focussing on the hig margin shit and generally becoming an awful place to go into.

I was looking at a bay of headsets the other day, and one of the staff members said to me 'that's a really popular headset, that', despite the fact I was looking generally at the bay, didn't have one in my hands, and id already said that I was just browsing earlier. When he approached me the second time, i said I'm still just browsing and he backed off. Game seem to be the only place on the high street where they follow you about offering their help, but it doesn't even make sense to do that because they don't have more to offer than the supermarket. When i was manager there, the guy offering the help would have been available to customers who needed it and theyd leave others alone, only helping when asked. Helpful staff told me about Deadly Premonition, EDF and No One Can Stop Mr. Domino! But that's not the shop they are any more. They don't have the specialiat knowledge because they don't require it. All they need to do is direct the occasional Mum to the shelf with fifa 15 on it, on the day that her son said 'can you pick up a copy of fifa 15 please' on launch day.

So these days, all the 'may i help you' guy can do is try to flog you additional shit you dont want, because there's no genuine help to be given. Customer's dont go into Game any more and ask, 'can you recommend me a racing game', they go in to buy Driveclub or Forza, the decision is made before they get into the shop.

So when you get home and unpack that Game own brand peripheral or whatever additional item, it better be useful and good quality, or the customer's going to feel cheated. 'Jesus, every time i go into Game, they tell me i need this extra thing, and when i get home, it's useless.'

And the other thing that's been mentioned is the crazy queues caused by selling preowned. If you buy a Ps4 in Asda, they get it fromthe stockroom and take your payment. You leave the store and the whole process took 5 minutes. In Game, there's always someone with a stack of games to trade in, and maybe a console or a mobile phon. The store only has 2 tills and that one customer is tying up one of the tills for 20 minutes while they check the condition of the disks, work out alk the trade values etc. Game may well have had queues out of the door over Xmas, but so does my local KFC and it's all down to slow service, not popularity.

Sorry, typing on a touchpad

[Dudley]

Good point, it's easy to forget the first ipod was an expensive mac only firewire device and wasn't tied to a store in any way in an environment where publishers were starting to put all kinds of shit on audio CDs in an attempt to stop them being ripped.

To be fair, i was talking to a friend of mine yesterday, an old area manager from Game, and we both agreed that when I left Game (12 years ago) there were a lot of rumblings about digital distribution and the lack of a real need for a shop. Msomeone else I know left about 4 years ago claiming Game were dead because of the impending doom of downloading. It's still not happened.

It did happen.

But yes the rest of your post echos mine. If you're a specialist you need to be one. Because what they are right now is some unholy combination of an expensive supermarket and a cheap (in the sense of what they offer for your stuff) CEX.

[MattyP]

And the other thing that's been mentioned is the crazy queues caused by selling preowned. If you buy a Ps4 in Asda, they get it fromthe stockroom and take your payment. You leave the store and the whole process took 5 minutes. In Game, there's always someone with a stack of games to trade in, and maybe a console or a mobile phon. The store only has 2 tills and that one customer is tying up one of the tills for 20 minutes while they check the condition of the disks, work out alk the trade values etc. Game may well have had queues out of the door over Xmas, but so does my local KFC and it's all down to slow service, not popularity.

Sorry, typing on a touchpad

Yeah that really used to piss me off in Game! I never understand why they don't have a separate till area for trade ins and people who want to trade in can queue in that.

As long as physical discs exist that can be reused without a license key game will exist. People like to trade stuff in and get something of a new game. Other people just like to buy games from a shop (and game do have a wider variety than supermarkets) IMHO.

[angel]

Martyn Gibbs is the same bloke that while at HMV, didn't stock the Ipod on release because 'he didn't see the appeal in it'

He was playing the long game you see, as the ipod is now on the slide.

[Down by Law]

No need to stock Ipod when you can dedicate that shelf space to £17.99 back catalogue CDs, remember those days

[Lovelyman]

And £20.99 imports.

[Rob Rymond]

I agree with some of the posts above, but the bit about 'not having an opinion' is wrong. None of my managers ever said to roll off spiel...perhaps they were alone in this but we were told to give opinion. 9/10 the game you don't recommend will be replaced with another one. People do tend to do that.

As for the queues, yes this will only get worse with trading in phones/TVS and tablets etc. They take 30 minutes to check, taking a staff member from the till/shop floor. I prided myself on blasting through queues, no one wants to wait in a queue and so I thrived on a massive queue by speedy transactions or queue running.

Apparently in my old store this Xmas, one of my old managers waited 45 minutes to be served and even he was getting impaitent. Clearly since I left they don't bother with queue runners or speeding through people.

[BossSaru]

45 minutes to get served? Fuck that. They really should have a separate trade-in desk to deal with people selling their stuff, so that they can race through the customers actually buying stuff.

In retail stores like Game it is all about getting the cash in the tills as quickly as possible. Creating a situation where people have money and can not give it to the cashier is a huge, and elementary, screw up by the company. How many people, whilst waiting in queue, would get fed up and go to Tesco instead? Or look up their item on Amazon/Argos/CEX, realise that it is cheaper there, and never return to Game?

[Dudley]

I agree with some of the posts above, but the bit about 'not having an opinion' is wrong. None of my managers ever said to roll off spiel...perhaps they were alone in this but we were told to give opinion. 9/10 the game you don't recommend will be replaced with another one. People do tend to do that.

I was working in GAME in 2004, there was a head office edict to never give anything other than a positive opinion of any game.

I assume you guys ignored it as much as we did, but I bet not everyone does.

[sandman]

As an aside, CEX have really pushed up the prices of current gen games since Xmas. Games that were £25 a few weeks back are £35 or more now. Are they trying to compete with Game for outrageous prices?

[MaffewE]

As an aside, CEX have really pushed up the prices of current gen games since Xmas. Games that were £25 a few weeks back are £35 or more now. Are they trying to compete with Game for outrageous prices?

I noted this too. Was looking at PS4 exclusives before Christmas, and Killzone was £10, Knack £12 and Infamous: Second Son £18. They're now £15 (up £5), £18 (up £6) and £25 (up £7) respectively.

[SeanR]

they're going up on amazon too. or appear to be.

[edit]

is PS4 diablo 3 rare or something?

1. amazon no longer stock it

2. their cheapest reseller is £45 new

3. 2nd hand copies are listed at £60

4. it was £35 last week.

Edited January 15, 2015 by SeanR

[decider]

Destiny was £20 in CEX before Christmas, now it's £28. It's probably simply supply and demand, the shelves were absolutely stacked with copies before the price came down so now they've cleared stock the price has increased to reflect that. CEX seem to be much more flexible on their pricing than other places, up until recently they'd barely give you a few quid for a Gamecube controller, but now Smash Bros. is out they'll give you £13, £1 more than the console itself!

[McCoy]

45 minutes to get served? Fuck that. They really should have a separate trade-in desk to deal with people selling their stuff, so that they can race through the customers actually buying stuff.

In retail stores like Game it is all about getting the cash in the tills as quickly as possible. Creating a situation where people have money and can not give it to the cashier is a huge, and elementary, screw up by the company. How many people, whilst waiting in queue, would get fed up and go to Tesco instead? Or look up their item on Amazon/Argos/CEX, realise that it is cheaper there, and never return to Game?

Quite right. They had a decent Xbox One offer after Christmas which I was very tempted to buy but the queue was just horrendous so I gave up and picked up a similar bundle a week later online. I'm really not interested in queuing for half an hour to give someone lots of money.

[Lorfarius]

Is Game finished?

[Transient Curse]

Shouldn't it be "Over" rather than "finished"?

[BossSaru]

"Insert coin(s) to continue"

[deerokus]

They passed Fission Mailed when they went bust the first time.

[Rob Rymond]

I noted this too. Was looking at PS4 exclusives before Christmas, and Killzone was £10, Knack £12 and Infamous: Second Son £18. They're now £15 (up £5), £18 (up £6) and £25 (up £7) respectively.

This happens every year. Game prices slowly increase once Christmas is done and the share and hype is done for another year. Thats why I stocked up on cheap deals pre-Xmas with no intention to play stuff until later in the year.

And your right cash in the tills is king at Christmas. We had to mention I think 6 things at one point in my career at Game at the till. I'd mention 2 max and get the cash in the till and get through to the next customer. The problem is the margin is pitiful on games and consoles hence selling second hand or Gameware products (which are much better than the ones of old). I think I read once that a charge kit for 360 was £4 to make but sold for £10-£15 depending on promotions.

I'll be honest I never heard of a document about positive opinions only, but I did start in 2008. I always read stuff from the aboves that 'people thrive on our opinions as gamers', I never really got any other impression otherwise. I'm not sticking up for them because I saw a lot of shit in my time but not to lie about games being good or not.