2019年7月4日
GameStop is dying: Here's what led to the retail giant's slow demise
The world’s biggest video game retailer, GameStop, is in serious trouble. In the past six months, the company’s stock value has dropped by two-thirds – from about $US15 in January to just $US5 by July – and it reshuffled its C-suite.
GameStop faces major challenges to its business model from the internet. As more people buy video games through digital storefronts, fewer buy games on physical discs from GameStop. Also, it has suffered a staggering series of self-owns through poor acquisitions, half-hearted initiatives, and an inability – or unwillingness – to evolve.
Every game was available through the digital storefronts operated by Sony and Microsoft (PlayStation Network and Xbox Live, respectively). The implications of that were huge for the world’s biggest game retailer. The foundation of GameStop’s business is selling video games on discs. And with the digitization of console games, the company was facing an existential threat along the lines of iTunes’ impact on record stores.
At the same time, GameStop took a big bet on an expensive new business: Spring Mobile. Then, it doubled down on that bet. In 2013, GameStop embarked on a new initiative: smartphone stores. First, there was Spring Mobile, followed by the purchase of hundreds of storefronts from AT&T. By 2016, GameStop owned and operated just shy of 1,500 mobile-phone stores under the Spring Mobile name. Those stores were expected to generate about $US1 million apiece. And when they didn’t generate that kind of money, they quickly became an expensive liability.
But that doesn’t mean the disc-based business model is leaving just yet – with new consoles from Microsoft and Sony coming in 2020 that play discs, “they just got a seven-more-year reprieve starting in 2020,” Pachter said. “GameStop’s got about 10 years before that ice cube is fully melted.”
Trump says US should match a 'big currency manipulation game' in China and Europe
President Donald Trump on Wednesday accused China and Europe of currency manipulation, suggesting that the US follow suit in order to remain competitive. “China and Europe playing big currency manipulation game and pumping money into their system in order to compete with USA,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “We should MATCH, or continue being the dummies who sit back and politely watch as other countries continue to play their games – as they have for many years!”
The Treasury Department has repeatedly declined to charge China with currency manipulation, a term for when a country artificially weakens the value of its money to make exports cheaper, but said that it should be monitored for such practices. Trump has shown mounting frustration over the strength of the dollar in recent months, which is influenced by interest rates, because it makes US exports relatively expensive abroad. He often accuses other countries of unfairly competing in the world market.
As his re-election campaign heats up, the president has increasingly pressured the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates. The central bank held interest rates steady last month and signalled openness to future cuts, pointing to trade uncertainty against the backdrop of a slowing but still solid economy.
Amazon, Microsoft, and Google plot to pull product manufacturing out of China
The US tech giants Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Dell, and HP are all gearing up to start shifting production away from China amid the trade war. Last month that Apple was seriously considering moving 15% to 30% of its iPhone production out of China, an early sign US companies wanted to reduce their exposure to the country.
Amazon is looking at moving production of its e-readers and Echo smart speakers to Vietnam, Microsoft is weighing up Thailand and Indonesia, presumably for production of the Xbox as well as its lesser-known Cortana speaker.
US tariffs pose an existential threat to video game consoles. Last week, Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo wrote a joint letter to the US government asking that game consoles be left off any tariff lists because of the “disproportionate harm” tariffs would cause to US consumers and business.
For Dell and HP, notebook computers are the main area where the companies are said to be looking to move production. The two companies shipped a combined 70 million notebook devices last year. HP was looking to shift 20% to 30% of production out of the country and was considering Thailand and Taiwan as alternatives. One source said the changes could begin as early as late July but were still liable to change.
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