Good Old... Gamestop?

Honestly, at this point the entire retail chain is starting to act
like that annoying kid in the corner, screaming, "Look at me, look at
me!" But I get it; after your entire raison d'etre goes up in a puff
of smoke because of changing market conditions, you're going to
flounder about trying to figure out what to do next.

Case in point: Gamestop, the beleaguered American retail video-game
chain, has now decided it's all about RETRO gaming.*

Because of course Gamestop yearns for the old-timey days, when console
wars were a thing and you could cheerfully sell them your old games
for pennies on the dollar. That's when Gamestop was making bank! For a
lot of people, stores like Gamestop were the only way they LEARNED
about new games, and publishers didn't dare offend them. Why wouldn't
Gamestop want to pretend that sort of business was still viable?

You know, maybe it's less that noisy kid and more the middle-aged shoe
salesman still living in the past back when he was the football star
in high school.

But I suspect, like many of Gamestops recent attempts to re-invent
itself, this transformation won't save it either. Between ready access
to emulation and companies re-releasing their older titles to GOG.com,
there's no real need for a 'retro gaming store' except as a nostalgic
curiousity. It's the sort of place you'd go into only because you
happened to stumble across it, play around with their overpriced
artifacts for a while, then leave and buy it somewhere cheaper.

Still, I guess it's better than flogging NFTs. Still... give it up,
Gamestop. You've had a good run. Shut down and cash out while you
still have some dignity left.




* announcement here
https://www.gamestop.com/retro-store-locator