Gamestop surprisingly optimistic about PSPGo
Kevin Pabst August 21, 2009 - 2:37 am
For a company that deals (almost) exclusively with retail products, Gamestop should be depressed when it comes to the PSPGo. They’re going to have all of their customers abandon them! Or so we thought.
Gamestop seems to be so set on their “digital downloads wont be a problem for years” stance that they’re more happy about receiving used copies of UMD games than they seem to be concerned about UMD vanishing.
Gamestop’s executive vice president of merchandising and marketing, Tony Bartel had this to say to Kotaku:
“It will also be a strong contributor to our trade-in process where you have people that will have UMD games that will no longer work on that platform that will fuel additional currency for GameStop.”
As I understand it, you’ve got to sell the games you buy from consumers to make any money. But if people are selling their UMD games to buy digital versions, who is going to bother buying a used UMD game that might scratch or be stolen, when they can have a lasts-forever digital version?
For the PSN points cards, if this article has any truth for North America or Europe, selling points cards isn’t all that profitable. Not at all in fact. Gamestop, along with video rental stores by Netflix and Redbox, are going to be some businesses that are edged out by the changing times, unless they change themselves.
Source: Kotaku.com
