Fear and Loathing in GameStop: Retailer Competition Gets Fierce

Fear and Loathing

Wal-Mart intends to put its competitors into a vicegrip this holiday season, and there's no telling whether they'll get out. The big-box behemoth has announced $10 price cuts for almost all of the video games it currently sells. Unlike previous sales which only pertained to awful, two-year-old games like Sonic and the Black Knight, Wal-Mart's offering Halo 3: ODST and Left 4 Dead 2 for $50 as opposed to $60.

Upon announcing these competitive price drops, Gamestop shares plumetted 8.26 percent.

At this point, it's unclear how Gamestop will respond. The company hasn't announced any plans to reduce the price of current-generation titles, nor have they advertised any special holiday promotions. With more gamers turning to digital download services, brick-and-mortar retailers like Gamestop, Toys "R" Us, and Best Buy will have to create strong incentives to force us out of our houses and through their automatic doors [via PC World].

Tags: Gamestop, Sales, Price Drop, Best Buy, Toys'r'Us

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Frank Anderson

December 09, 2009

I think Gamestop will just take the hit one this one. Getting the bodies in the door with sales is huge on Black Friday, but afterwards you get more and more of the lazy shoppers who are more concerned with getting the shopping over, rather then on getting the best deal. At least that is what I think from having three years on anecdotal evidence by working in a Gamestop. I would love it if this would drive down prices more though, because bigger price drops means more games sold... that is always a good thing for publishers, developers and gamers as a whole.

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Nick Giunta

I think, the one way Gamestop can compete with juggernauts like Wal-mart and Best Buy are to hold more sales with [b]used [/b]games. They have little control over new games, but they can manipulate the price of used as much as they want. Maybe they should have more sales... buy 2 used games, get 20$ back. .. something of that nature.