As consumers have begun to leave physical copies of games on the shelf, brick-and-mortar video game stores are slowly going the way of Blockbuster, and its main gaming hub is leaving little confidence for any hope of a restart.
GameStop has declared “game over” on its quest to find a buyer due to its inability to “secure financing at terms a buyer would find acceptable,” Bloomberg reports.
The company’s shares fell more than 27% after the announcement — the most in 16 years.
Like RPG, but you can’t respawn
The end of the search comes after months of turbulence, during which the company’s longtime CEO passed away, and his replacement quit after just 3 months on the job.
GameStop started looking for buyers in June, but, with its business model in jeopardy, there weren’t many strategic partners interested in merging with the nation’s leading seller of pre-owned Max Payne copies.
The Netflix meteor is coming
Tech giants from Apple to Amazon are racing to make the ‘Netflix of gaming’ — a streaming service that would let gamers play top video games anytime without the clunky console.
Since GameStop posted a loss of $488.6m in Q4 after a profit of $59.4m a year earlier, ambitious new platforms from Amazon and Apple could be the nail in G-Stop’s coffin.
In November, Gamestop CFO Robert Lloyd said there are less than 2 years of lease-life left for GameStop, which means it’s only a matter of time before the company takes a needle to its ballooned store portfolio.
