GameStop is closing a whole lot of extra shops this 12 months. It’s been a tough 12 months for GameStop. While the retailer anticipated the discharge of next-gen consoles — PS5 and Xbox Series X — to show its luck round, thus far this hasn’t occurred. Meanwhile, the pandemic continues to disrupt commerce, and like most companies, GameStop has felt this disruption significantly. That mentioned, maybe it ought to come as no shock that it plans to shut between 400 and 450 shops all over the world throughout this fiscal 12 months.
The information comes approach of the corporate’s newest earnings name, which it had with traders right this moment for its Q2 earnings. More particularly, the knowledge comes through Jim Bell, the corporate’s CFO. According to Bell, the corporate has already closed 388 shops all over the world this 12 months, with 206 of those closures coming throughout this newest quarter, or in different phrases, the previous few months.
As a results of these closures, GameStop’s retailer depend has fallen to five,122 shops. This is over 600 fewer shops than it had presently final 12 months. And sadly for GameStop workers, the closures aren’t stopping, with GameStop already confirming there’s extra coming this 12 months and in 2021.
That mentioned, none of this comes as a shock. Not solely has GameStop been struggling the previous few years, but it surely already introduced in 2019 it was planning to shut fairly just a few shops in an try to “de-densify.”
Of course, it stays to be seen if this technique will work, but it surely’s not just like the video game retailer has many choices. In an more and more digital market, brick-and-mortar retailers such because it have been at all times going to must take drastic measures to transition to a brand new era.
As for the closures themselves, it stays to be seen which shops are on the chopping block. That mentioned, if any extra data is supplied on this we’ll make sure to replace this pot.
In the in the meantime, be happy to depart a remark or two or three letting us know what you assume or hit me up on Twitter @Tyler_Fischer_ to speak all issues gaming.
