GAME to close 43 stores, axe 247 jobs

I suspect a few may disappear in Birmingham. There's 2 GAME stores in the Pallasades, a GameStation on New Street, and a GAME in the BullRing. If I had to gues I'd say they will shut the small Pallasades store and leave the rest.

If they are being more drastic then both Pallasades stores will disappear.

Edited 1 times. Last edit by Matthew Humphies on 26th February 2010 1:06pm

I've always preferred GameStation to Game, it's a shame that it's the former that will be more severely affected.

Let's consider the future in Game purchases. The UK Government has announced it will be upgrading the broadband network to rival that of other countries (at last). Thereby, allowing downloading LEGAL purchased games to become much faster. The consoles are already upgrading their storage capacity to allow for games played off the HD or expanded with DLC. Companies such as Apple will profit from this as they already have shown a well designed service model with the iTunes Store. And, most games, new or second hand, can be purchased cheaper off the Net than in the High St.

Games sold on DVD or BluRay in the High St stores will have to compete with that in the future. That, plus the high running costs needed to maintain a store in a prime location will make it very hard for the likes of GAME and GameStation to make a profit. The only option I can see for such stores is to reduce the markup of 2nd hand games to match the Net and maybe have an in house MultiPlayer section as an incentive to attract customers.

Sadly, it won't be easy for such stores to stay in business when they only sell games and nothing else. I hope those made redundant will find work quickly.

Doesn't affect the PC gamer!

there is rumor about a game selling chain being closed here in czech republic... GAME is active here so we will see in just few days if this move is international.

I see Enfield Town being affected - there's a Game and Gamestation shop not far from each other.

In Basildon town, Essex there are TWO GAME stores and a Gametsation in the same town square! ridiculous!

Hopefully one will go here.

Otakar Schon. You have extremely bad information. Its another store chain which is closing operations. GAME is profiting in CZ. On the opposite, they are opening new stores. Please keep yourself better informed.

You know, GAME is actually something like Macdonald of game retails business. They are trying to be everywhere, they are completly uniform, they like to employ cheapest work force, which is being treated like brainwashed monkey. From what i have heard, they even dislike to employ gamers.
GAME is being managed by incompetent people who were riding on gigantic wave of relatively new gaming industry grow. They copied GAMESTOP with preowned and they are excited how you can actually earn gigantic profit from something where you didnt add practically any value, except monkey trained stuff and ugly purple pink stores. But they dont mind. They ve earned couple of billions, and when time of digital distribution will come /i expect in around 10-15 years it will completly overtake physical media/, they will just change logo and start to sell for example... fill anything. Some managing directors even will not notice that they are not selling games anymore, i presume. They will come with ideas of preowned clothes, preowned already chewed food...