Gamestop Digital [2021] Download

I know Gamestop is having a digital sale on their website currently, and like a dummy I bought my girlfriend a code for The Sims 4 Vampires on Xbox One without doing any research on Gamestop's website functionality first. I see now that I could have done a search on Reddit and found a whole slew of negative experiences, but like any reasonable person I thought buying a digital game from a major retailer would be fairly straight forward these days.

I'm pretty surprised to hear I have to wait so long to receive a digital game code. I would have waited to buy it elsewhere during another sale had I known ahead of time, but I guess that's my fault for not looking up Gamestop's online policies. Anyway, I try to bring up the random email my confirmation was sent to and the fact that my actual account hadn't received anything, and she only seemed equipped to confirm my email address on file but lost at how to help beyond that. I agree to wait until the review period is completed.

Gamestop Digital Download

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I refresh my gamestop account pretty often at this point, because I'm feeling bad I had told my girlfriend about the DLC when I placed the order and then had to tell her it was actually going to be awhile. A day later I see that the order status had been changed to canceled. Confused, I decided to call customer support back. During the hour+ wait, I check my bank account for unrelated reasons and notice a new charge from Gamestop for 11.99, which happens to be the exact cost of The Sims 4 Vampires I ordered.

TLDR: bought a digital code from Gamestop online, 2 days and a few technical problems on the GS website later I have no code but have been charged for it. Spent roughly 3 hours combined time on hold on the phone for absolutely zero customer support. Avoid using Gamestop's website for digital items if you can.

On the surface, such a transition seems to embrace the overwhelming logic that the future is digital without ignoring the existence of a large legacy business. There is only one problem: the digital space is highly contested already. And while GameStop might be able to hold its own against other online retailers, it is harder to see how it can prevail against console producers. Gamers can stream directly from PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch. The appeal to own a game that can be resold is slowly evaporating as convenience wins the day.

In 2020 digital game sales outpaced physical sales for the first time. While this was driven by the pandemic, it is likely to mark a long-term trend. GameStop is a mass-market player with a reputation for good deals. Taking these two things together, a concentration on brick-and-mortar is not the most promising option either.

The spruced-up stores attracted younger and more affluent customers than JC Penny or Walmart. They are also fully integrated in the new digital strategy as they double as a warehouse. In 80% of all online sales they play a role. As COO John J. Mulligan notes, you can save 40% of handling costs when you deliver to a customer from the store and up to 90% when the item is picked up in the store. Some of those collecting from the store will make more purchases. Integrating digital and physical can obviously be a winning strategy!

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The announcement also follows GameStop's rough Q4 earnings report in March, as its losses widened despite increased sales. The push into NFTs and crypto comes as no surprise though. Shareholder and Chewy founder Ryan Cohen launched an activist campaign against GameStop in 2020, calling for it to become a digitally driven technology company.

While casual readers probably missed the potential import, investors homed in on that sentence. "I received an email from [GameStop Investor Relations representative] Eric Cerny and in the email he said, 'We are allowed to state we will receive a portion of the downstream revenue from any device we will bring into the Xbox ecosystem,'" Domo Capital Management President Justin Dopierala told Ars in an interview. He added that Cerny later clarified in a phone call that the deal applied to all digital sales on all next-gen Xbox consoles sold through GameStop.

Loop Capital analyst Anthony Chukumba confirmed that same basic outline to Ars Technica based on his conversations with GameStop management. "The way it's going to work is for every Microsoft Xbox console that GameStop sells going forward, GameStop will get some percentage of the revenue from every digital full game download, DLC, microtransaction, and any subscriptions as well," he said.

Dopierala, who has been rather bullish on GameStop since last year, estimates GameStop's cut could run anywhere from one to 10 percent of all digital revenues for those consoles, a share that he says "materiality could be quite large, especially as time goes on."

But Chukumba told Ars he thinks GameStop's cut of digital sales is much lower, somewhere under one percent. "I don't believe it's large enough to make a significant impact on GameStop's financial results going forward," he said. "Largely, I don't believe that [it's a bigger cut] because what is Microsoft's incentive? I don't see what this does for Microsoft exactly. If they didn't have this, would they sell fewer Xboxes?"

To confuse matters even further, Dopierala said GameStop's Cerny told him the revenue-sharing arrangement would also extend to pre-owned consoles sold by GameStop. "So if someone bought a console from Best Buy and then two years from now they trade it in to GameStop and GameStop resells it, they would then revenue share on [digital content purchases on] that console," Dopierala said.

Dopierala also told Ars the revenue-sharing arrangement should apply to "all downstream digital revenue" on the GameStop-sold systems, which would include digital movies, TV, and music purchases made through the system, for instance. "I believe the simplest way to think about it is this: On any next-gen Xbox sold by GameStop, any transaction where Microsoft makes money, GameStop makes money," Dopierala said.

In Chukumba's view, Microsoft has simply traded a minuscule chunk of some Xbox digital revenue in exchange for a GameStop commitment to use Microsoft's cloud products and tablets in its stores, as announced last week. "It's going to make Microsoft as a company look much better [to shareholders] with cloud revenue from GameStop," he said.

The company has also felt the sting of the digital age slowly creeping up on it. For years, people have been switching to downloads and buying their games directly from the distributor. Why feel the need to go to a store when you can just sit on your couch and download a game.

GameStop has always lacked some form of content in their stores and the years have only been worse for that. In 2019, Sony decided to pull all digital content from GameStop's stores. That was a massive blow that helped people switch over to digital. Many customers were going into the stores for downloads because of promotional offerings or PowerUp Rewards points. Without those bonuses, it was better to stay at home and not waste the gas. Before then, other digital items like PC games were hard to come by and some games had bonuses like discounts if you pre-ordered them through a digital store.

It is no surprise that digital gaming has been on the rise, but do customers realize how much of a rise it has had? Going back to 2009, when GameStop was for profitable and digital gaming didn't have the same market it does now, physical games made up 80% of the gaming market.

Fast forward to 2018 and the market has changed dramatically. Only two years ago, physical games made up 17% of the market. Meanwhile, digital games made up 83%. That change is only going to increase as time goes by and internet speeds go up.

GameStop needs a new business model that revolves more around digital gaming. There has been a switch in some instances with test stores that focus on being more of a gaming cafe style of store. The business model is flawed though. GameStop relies heavily on trade-ins. About 46% profit on each preowned game they sell. With less physical games being bought, there are less trades being made. This method of business seems doomed to fail in the rising digital age.

In 2008, Apple launched the app store and with it, digital downloads of mobile games, skipping traditional distribution channels and using hardware (iphones) which GameStop did not sell or service. In 2016, mobile game sales are projected to surpass traditional console games sales for the first time.[vii] As opportunities for video game sales growth for developers go mobile, investment in new games and marketing for traditional games has begun to slow down. The chart below shows the declining physical video game market from its peak in 2008 to today.

Long gone are they days GameStop could simply sell games. Even without digital disruption, game companies have kept the purchase price of the stand-alone games and consoles basically the same over the past decade, leading to declines in price based on inflation.[viii] Games now come with DLC (downloadable content), season passes and many other types of post-purchase add-ons, increasing the lifetime price of a video game. In 2014, GameStop made $724M selling those add-ons and needs to increase this going forward.[ix] GameStop needs to defend their business model through exclusive content, as they have done with Call of Duty.[x] They also need to take a piece of mobile revenues, which can be done by converting cash from teenagers, who typically lack credit cards, into mobile currency. GameStop can partner with major developers such as King and EA to create bonus conversion deals in store to foster this transaction. 2351a5e196