It's hard to dispute the domination of GameStop when it comes to videogames retailing in the United States. For both new titles and used games, retail chain stores are the place to go to and even as gamers are complaining about the level of service of the employees and the prices offered for used games, GameStop marches on and posts good financial results every quarter.
And now it seems that the retailer is keen on bringing its unique brand of videogame business to the digital distribution market, launching the
GameStop Casual Digital Store created in partnership with RealNetworks.
Tony Bartel, who is the executive vice president of merchandising and marketing at
GameStop, is saying that “to an ever-expanding customer demographic” is the main target of the new store. On release, the GameStop Casual Digital Store is selling titles like Plants vs. Zombies and Peggle from PopCap, Scrabble from Gamehouse and Diner Dash from Take Two. There are a couple of hundreds of games offered at the moment. Some of them are being offered with a 50% reduction in price because of the release of the store.
The new service is also offering visitors another way of placing pre-orders for upcoming high profile AAA releases for the PC, like Dragon Age and Red Faction: Guerrilla. This is interesting because GameStop has, in the last years, become less and less interested in PC titles, favoring consoles. The company has not said whether it also plans to add full non casual games to its fresh feature,
competing with services like Steam.
GameStop reported around 8.8 million dollars in sales last year and claims to have more than 6,000 stores open world wide. It has long held that digital distribution will not be a threat to physical retail for a long time so the move to open the GameStop Casual Digital Store is quite telling of how it plans to approach the next few years.
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