Be Excellent To Each Other

Supermarkets really are trying to drive games retailers out of business, aren't they?

Well Asda aren't doing very well at it. In the one near here, save for very occasional offers such as this, their games are fairly expensive and they have a tiny selection, also their 360 section is smaller than the Wii one for some reason.

Good.

I never said it was a bad thing. I am whore and will buy wherever's cheapest. I have no shop-loyalty.

It's a bad thing if you ever want to buy anything other than the top 5 in a shop new.

I have the internet for that.

For buying in a shop?

No, for buying anything that isn't in the top 5.

Anyway, shall we have a new topic for this? Mods, split out if you want.

Why are the supermarkets going to put games shops out of business? They will take some sales and perhaps have a bit of an impact but that's what they do, they try to sell a bit of everything, that's why they're called supermarkets. They haven't put specialist retailers for clothes, or electrical equipment, or music, or DVDs, or greetings cards, or newspapers and magazines, or booze out of business. Call me lazy but I actually like the fact that there is somewhere I can go and get a few of those things from one place.

Burtons group have been struggling in recent years. Virgin's megastore chain went to the wall, and was picked over by Zavvi; Dixons steadily closed stores until there were none left. These things have a lot to do with supermarkets.

Burtons is having a closing down sale...

This is not the supermarkets fault really. Dixons and Currys had the size and scale to offer their goods at competitive prices, but instead decided that being a load of profiteering cunts would be better, and have been caught short as consumers start being a bit more savvy about where they buy their shit. Good riddance to these fucking stores, imo.

Supermarkets sell food with huge markups and work on convenience and leverage to maintain those margins - they can afford to sell games, dvds, cds, clothes at cost as they make so much money from food. Crap as the above mentioned stores are, they would have lasted even less well if they had tried to compete by selling all their stock at a loss. Dunno what would have happened if Dixons/Virgin/Burtons has started selling food, though

You make me so cross.

Shit. Sorry - I almost copied the whole bargains thread here. New spacky mod hands, see.

Hold on -

You're doing ok, Mr Chris. You're doing ok.

*continues in spite*

Bully xbox 360 13 pond

Now now, Mr Dimrill. Don't play up for the supply teacher.

At Tesco you can pick up such bargains as Bioshock for 49.99 and Assassin's Creed for a snip at 44.99!

*shrugs*

t'eva.

Gah!

What the Hell's going on here, then?

An People are being meanies.

Shit! It's the filth. *hides catapult behind back* Nothing sir.

It was Dimrill, sir! It was Dimrill! *points*

Clip 'im rahnd the earole and send him 'ome sir!

[tall man from phantasm voice]
You think when games die they go to heaven, no they come to me!!
[/tall man from phantasm voice]

Really? Around here, all the Dixons stores were replaced with Currys.digital stores—none closed. And there are more PC Worlds opening up. DSG Retail seems to still be doing rather well overall. God knows why, though.

Really? My perception was that they were slowly but surely dying on their arse. If I was less lazy I might try to find some annual reports to show a year-on-year earning comparison which might either substantiate or disprove my wild assumption.

The best thing about Dixons was that they'd have computers on display at the back of the shop.

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In the 80's Dixons and Curry's seemed glamourous places. Today they seem like griefholes full of tat and extended warranties.

What do you mean "new"?

Maybe they're trying to open-new-stores their way out of continued failure to sell piles of massively overpriced tat to an increasingly internet-aware public. They're about 8-9% down year-on-year again aren't they?

Maybe the cunty finance twats are propping them up in these hard times of fewer-tellies-on-credit-cards.

Dixons maybe but Curry's just sold waching machines and stuff. I used to enjoy playing Barbarian 2 on the Amstrad console back in the day.

So untrue you should be banned:



For the benefits of those without Youtube, it's a Curry's advert from ooohh Xmas '86 flogging the new Sinclair Spectrum +2. Currys did sell washing machines etc but also sold computers. Not the range that Dixons had mind. You'd have trouble finding a CPC in all but the largest Curry's stores, but Dixons always carried them.

Tesco and their ilk, are not exactly killing the decent gamer shop, but they will put things like Game up against a bit. Forcing Game to lower prices, well, that's not a bad thing, Shirley?

The one in Cwmbran closed. In Cardiff they spent a huge amount of money moving to massive premises -- the largest Dixons in the country in fact -- then closed it up less than one year later. They moved to a much smaller premises, rebranded as Currys.Digital, then closed that less than a year later. DSG has no high street presence within thirty miles of here (there are a few out-of-town Currys and PC World stores, of course). The only Currys.Digital I can think of is a tiny store, about 300 square feet, in Abergavenny.

I don't think these are the signs of a firm doing well.

To get back to the thread topic, if these stores are in decline then I'd wager that it has a lot more to do with the internet than with supermarkets. Same with the other specialist retailers that have been going through tough times.

I suppose the Global Economic Crisis^TM doesn't help, either.

My local Tesco's is one of those hyper-big ones. They sell everything from DIY stuff (paint, wallpaper, tools, etc) to car stuff to TVs and have a huge games section.

I've been in one of those hyper Sainsbury's things, and they had a fair games selection too. But it seems to me that the regular Tesco, Sainsbury's and Asda stores have a smallish selection of recent releases only, and don't have, as with somewhere like Game or CEX or whatever, older games and 2 for £25 deals and whatnot. So I'm not sure they're going to kill off games stores.

I thought online shops were doing that, mind.

Re The Death of Dixons; spoilered to avoid the monotony for those not intersted



Anyway, I'm not sure the supermarkets are killing of the game shops. I think it's just another widget for them to sell cheap - more often than not they aren't that competitive on their prices anyway. The big chain game shops are killing off the independents anyway so it's about time they too got a good ass jabbing from the big boys.

Yup. Sometimes it's outrageous bargains, other times it's ancient games at full price.

But yes, if high street cunts like GAME and Gamestation should perish, good fucking riddance.

What's wrong with a shop that sells older PC games at 3 for £20? I like them.

I've said this before on WoS but I'm a repetitive sod so I'll say it again.

Games are so easy to buy these days. In the old days the getting hold of a game you wanted was hard unless you used mail order. Usually it was a case of running to the shop, cash in hand, to see what they had in stock. Chances are the magazines hadn't even reviewed the latest games the shops had in stock. Rarely did I buy a game off the back of a review because (a) chances are it wasn't in the shops and (b) if it was there might be something that looked more exciting that hadn't yet been reviewed.

You got your budget games from the newsie, WH Smiths, toy shops and some branches of Woolies. Full price games were harder. Locally we only had WH Smiths and very low amounts of stock were carried, also remembering that the small full price shelf space was split between three formats. Getting anything on CPC disc was near impossible. If you had the 15 quid and they had a game, you'd just buy whatever they had! That's how I got Robocop.

Of course we had the legendary Software Plus in Aldershot that was one of the only dedicated games shops in the area. I remember going in mid 1993 and an assistant telling me that they could still shift 8 bit games, but the warehouses were running out. The demand was still there!

Oh and we had Hitler games in our town for a year from 1992-1993. Run by a man who looked like Hitler, it never had any customers and had the barest shelves you can imagine. If Soviet Russia had software shops, this is what they would look like. The shop went bust, natch.

For a proper fix of games you could go to Southampton. It's weird, even all these years on when walking through town I have the urge to go into WH Smiths to look at the CPC games.

So buying games was hard unless you used mail order (hard for kids without credit cards).

These days there are dedicated shops jammed packed with games in a way you just couldn't imagine in the old days. Even Software Plus probably carried the tenth of the stock of the nearest Game store.

Games are big business, but do kids get the satisfaction or excitement I got when buying games? Ask me where I purchased any of my Nintendo or PS2 games from and I probably couldn't tell you. Yet I could name where I purchased most of my 8 bit titles. Probably 16 bit as well come to think of it. And keep in mind that's probably 500 games!!!!!!!

The fact I can remember reflects the way games purchasing has changed I think.

The number 1 entertainment industry in the UK now.

Malc

Over in the Great White North, when I was very young you tended to get games from Consumers Distributing (Argos/Index-style catalogue store), department store's games section or possibly from a computer store that mostly did hardware but also had a cabinet full of software.

A bit later, the arrival of Toys R Us and specialist game shop 'Compucentre' improved things. But neither was perfect - Toys R Us had a huge selection but annoying method of buying games - you had to take a ticket to the cashier, and then take the receipt and ticket to yet another window to actually get the game. Compucentre figured they were the only show in town and so charged whatever they liked. It was also at this time that a few good indie specialist shops appeared. Microplay and A-Plus software specialised in consoles and computers respectively, but both became victims of their own success and over-expanded themselves into bankruptcy. 110-220, an obscure little import electrical shop (its name taken from the differing voltages!) decided that selling games was a better bet. A visit to 110-220 was one of my favourite things, as the exuberant Asian staff and huge selection of all the best and obscure domestic and import games was to me what a candy store full of jars of delights was to a Dickensian urchin.

In latter times, 'Future Shop' filled the role of Dixons in Canada, and they had a marvellous selection of PC games. Blockbuster video rented games on a scale unheardof by previous local video stores - and did consoles too! Fancy a SNES for the weekend? Meanwhile, an excellent indie shop opened nearby called Gamerama which, for the first time I'd ever seen, did used games! I could trade in my old, unplayed Game Boy games for credit towards used Sega CD games. I could rent Saturns and 3D0s, and I could (with an adaptor I'd found in another 110-220esque import shop) buy the weird Japanese Megadrive games that occasionally turned up in the selection that nobody else was able to run.

That was the golden age. EB soon arrived and started skanking things up, and the rest is a downward spiral of corporate greed and badness.

I very much enjoyed that chinny!

I worked at both Game and EB for a number of years and this sums it up perfectly!

I never worked out why customers were buying games from us at £40 when they could get them offline for £30? It's a strange world of idiocy!

Because they could get them NOW?

True. And actually it's probably all the poorer for it. Yeah games are easier to get hold of, but most of the games are clones and are hyped to death. In the old days you had to judge games on the artwork, the back cover spiel, some screenshots of another format (unless it was from Codemasters) and a quote from David Darling who, lets face it, was even easier to please than an Amiga Action reviewer.

Just the act of getting hold of a game was an achievement. Name me the latest title and I could go down to town and just buy it these days.

The magics gone. Games are now no more than a music CD or a newspaper. And perhaps mags like Retrogamer might toughen up their marking if their readers had more hoops to jump through to buy a game.