"We have been informed by a GAME employee that the future for the company relies on E3. He asks to remain anonymous but said:
“Staff are fearing for their jobs as we don’t know what the future holds. We have been told it all relies on E3 and what the companies announce, along with demand of up and coming games. We have had a poor few years as the transition to next-gen for consumers did not happen as quick as anticipated”"
I find it hard to believe that some teenager in a GAME store in Basingstoke or somewhere has access to this kind of insider knowledge, to be honest. It's not like GAME are sending out memos going "uh oh!"
That's not to say that GAME isn't in bad shape because it's never really been in good shape, but I'd definitely question the source of this particular story.
FWIW, back when I worked there when I was at uni and stuff, we were 100% briefed in store level on things like when there were supply tiffs with publishers. I remember specifically an email coming down, years and years ago now, where there'd been supply difficulties with EA and we were told all about it and to remove all EA games from the top charts out on the store and "Not to promote EA games directly," things like that.
I fully believe the "we have been told it all rides on E3," too as that stinks of the classic GAME upper management scaremongering (justified or not) to try to get staff to really forcefully drive pre-orders during the show buzz. A lot of that depends on who your regional manager is, too, as it always seemed like some of them were more into the politics of fear than others. That's not to say whoever made these comments is actually specifically clued in to a good level; usually the store staff are, I find, tactically misinformed, or lied to by omission, told some stuff but missing the bigger picture.
As a person who works for the company, we have heard nothing of the sort. The most any body has heard is the content of the MCV article about the loss of some credit insurance
Didn't know that Sony stuff never went away - that's pretty weird (and potentially telling) in itself, huh.
RE Credit Insurance, the loss of it to such a large figure is not insignificant, but obviously it's not the doom bells tolling. It is the first step down a darker path, though, so hopefully they reverse that soon with a strong holiday period.
