Yeah I'll be up for reading that, you're one of the saner gaffers.
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UK Retailer GAME is dead | Brera's Lament
- Thread starter CrunchinJelly
- Start date
- Status
Oh shit other Gaffers that live in Farnborough!
Yeah I was surprised that ours is still up, it always seemed quite busy on weekends when I'd go to town though. Feel bad for the staff there when it goes, they're nice guys.
Jeff Albertson
Member
Im from Rishton, I went into there last week to pick something up from max Speilman and the whole town centre is a shithole. Gamestation always smelled funny there anyway but both them and game had nothing cheap really at all in the sale.
All accy town centre seems to have now is pound shops, not even a troll on a bike in a clock anymore! Depressing.
Jeff Albertson
Member
Scary really most towns around me there are plenty of pound shops and cash converters type places and more and more empty shops
Mario Kart 7 for £28 is a steal!
...but now those empty-looking shots of GAME and Gamestation are making me sad.
Poor buys and girls.Starwolf_UK
Member
For now it is...
According to the list the big GAME should still be open. Good times. Got myself a copy of Mario DDR there for £10...I then went back to the train station...
That is madness. Surley a buyer for the business would want a good balance of locations and the best staff possible not cases of 2 stores in Watford (or was it 3?) and 0 in St.Albans (and likewise repeated). Well done, pricewaterhousecoopers. To make matters worse it might have been based off performance 18 months ago (or perhaps Ian Sheperd was planning this but acted too slow to avoid mass panic...then agian the whole we need to shed 300 stores soon, nah lets get rid of 53 by 2013). Trawling the the MCV comments I found these interesting remarks:
Does anyone else recall anything like that happening?
I'm interested. One though is most of it may have happened because Blockbuster decided not to buy Netflix when they had the chance...as a result Netflix basically ate into Blockbusters market bad making them being desperate for cash, selling their UK asset Gamestation off...unless Blockbuster USA going bust was inevitable...
Also, no matter how many times you Lisa Morgan, it probably won't be enough to appease people. Shame most people would blame her successor, Ian Sheperd.
When I worked at Blockbuster, I used to have a 'OUT MONDAY/FRIDAY' bay to promote upcoming films. I'd cover it with 'OUT MONDAY' / 'OUT FRIDAY' banners in an X shape over the bay, so it'd be obvious that they weren't out yet.
Customers STILL DIDN'T NOTICE. They'd reach right past through the banners, and take the items. I'd then relish in telling them they obviously missed all the signs right infront of their faces and seeing their reactions.
thelatestmodel
Junior, please.
Fist bump! Not really much to celebrate, but that's still pretty cool that there's (at least) three of us. I sort of don't count actually, as I live in Canada now!
My store looks so weird now...
This looks very familiar. It wouldn't happen to be the Basingstoke one in the mall would it?
Nope!
GarthVaderUK
Banned
If you like, please tweet your support for the folks involved in the GAME sit in, I'm sure they'd appreciate it:
https://twitter.com/#!/GameSitIn
Read more here:
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/341647/game-staff-hold-protests-over-refused-redundancy-pay/
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...staff-launch-sit-in-protest-over-redundancies
https://twitter.com/#!/GameSitIn
Read more here:
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/341647/game-staff-hold-protests-over-refused-redundancy-pay/
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...staff-launch-sit-in-protest-over-redundancies
They all look the same, bra. I swore for a second it was the one in Lancaster shopping arcade.
It reminds me of the Peterlee branch.
checkeredknight
Member
I almost forgot. I found some old leaflets in the back of the shop today that I figure will give you guys a good giggle;
Also, I noticed a comment on the most recent GAME-related MCV article saying that management have been promised an extra £500 bonus pay if the stores are organised, clean and tidy come Friday. If so, I find this highly unfair as it's mostly us lackies doing the work. Absolute no disrespect to the management of my store, they're lovely people. I just find it a bit unfair. I'm treating this as BS anyway, but perhaps LordAlu or someone else in the know can enlighten me.
Also, I noticed a comment on the most recent GAME-related MCV article saying that management have been promised an extra £500 bonus pay if the stores are organised, clean and tidy come Friday. If so, I find this highly unfair as it's mostly us lackies doing the work. Absolute no disrespect to the management of my store, they're lovely people. I just find it a bit unfair. I'm treating this as BS anyway, but perhaps LordAlu or someone else in the know can enlighten me.
Psychotext
Member
Blows my mind that anyone bought the PS3 on release in the UK. Prices were ridiculous.
They need to get real; there is no money with which to pay them. My brother worked at Rover; it took months for the statutory redundancy to come through.
Mario Kart 7 for £28 is a steal!
...but now those empty-looking shots of GAME and Gamestation are making me sad.
I brought mario kart and 3d land for 20 quid each from comet.
zomgbbqftw
Banned
I've written something, but it is almost 2,000 words long...
XANDER CAGE
Member
I almost forgot. I found some old leaflets in the back of the shop today that I figure will give you guys a good giggle;
Also, I noticed a comment on the most recent GAME-related MCV article saying that management have been promised an extra £500 bonus pay if the stores are organised, clean and tidy come Friday. If so, I find this highly unfair as it's mostly us lackies doing the work. Absolute no disrespect to the management of my store, they're lovely people. I just find it a bit unfair. I'm treating this as BS anyway, but perhaps LordAlu or someone else in the know can enlighten me.
Jesus Christ I'm glad I don't live in the UK anymore. Highway robbery.
checkeredknight
Member
Don't worry. You can pick one up second hand now for £99.99. IIRC they dropped in price pretty quickly after launch, too. Was way before my time with the company when this POS existed though.
zomgbbqftw said:
I also wish to read this.
IdreamofHIME
Member
lol, £429 is almost what I paid for my two PS3's. My 1st 40gb fattie was £240 and my 250gb slim was £199.
MrNyarlathotep
Banned
Fixed and basically underlining what the problem has been for years.
Q
Queen of Hunting
Unconfirmed Member
i have strong belief poundworld/discount uk will buy some of these stores up that are closed
Keyser Soze
Member
UK probably has the quickest drops for games of any country - at least online. FFXIII-2 was £14 recently. SSX dropped to £25 today. Vita 3G was £229.95 for a while. Twisted Metal is already £22.45 a few days after it came out. Darkness II already under £20. It is not to bad to buy from there.
Diablohead
Member
I remember those £425 ps3 prices like it was yesterday, was at uni in middlesbrough and the HMV there was advertising it out the wazoo, it tempted me but I would have been fecked for half a year money wise lol.
My store looks so weird now...
This has made it sink in that Game and Gamestation are gone. Actually fairly sad now.
Maybe stick it up on Google Docs and just post the link, rather than pasting it all?
industrian
will gently cradle you as time slowly ticks away.
I almost forgot. I found some old leaflets in the back of the shop today that I figure will give you guys a good giggle;
Also, I noticed a comment on the most recent GAME-related MCV article saying that management have been promised an extra £500 bonus pay if the stores are organised, clean and tidy come Friday. If so, I find this highly unfair as it's mostly us lackies doing the work. Absolute no disrespect to the management of my store, they're lovely people. I just find it a bit unfair. I'm treating this as BS anyway, but perhaps LordAlu or someone else in the know can enlighten me.
The thing to remember as well is that this was in the £1=$2 glory days.
And now people know why I bought my PS3 from Canada.
Yeah, it's complete bullshit. Management are getting nothing extra at all, we're in exactly the same boat as everyone else in the store.
Ashamed to say I was one of the chumps who bought a £425 launch PS3.
Did it on hype alone. The launch was abysmal and I remember spending the first 6 months playing PES 6 and Resident Evil 2..
[/idiot]
You would think I would have learnt from that but there I was at launch for 3DS and Vita, too.
Did it on hype alone. The launch was abysmal and I remember spending the first 6 months playing PES 6 and Resident Evil 2..
[/idiot]
You would think I would have learnt from that but there I was at launch for 3DS and Vita, too.
Psychotext
Member
One of the advantages of having a 100 game + backlog is that I don't buy consoles at launch.
Bloody cheap games too.
Bloody cheap games too.
Are you Brera's son?
POST IT!
OneMoreQuestion
Member
No he's Brera's dad.
Jeeze Louise.
I remember buying my PS3 in the August after launch, when Sony bundled a game and an extra controller with the system.
ShopTo, in their infinite awesomeness, removed the extra controller and game from the bundle and just sold the 60gb systems at a discounted price (£350, I believe).
Then a couple of months later the non-BC consoles came out, and were priced higher than what I'd paid for the 60gb. To this day I felt like I'd got a bargain (PS3 is my favourite console in this generation), and it was pretty much the moment I jumped from the high street to online, since there was effectively a £75 difference in the price of a PS3.
freethought
Member
Yeah, picked up a launch US fatty for £300 a shade under two months before the UK launch when the PS3 ebay market crashed after Christmas. I did get stuck with a £40-odd quid customs bill but I'd have been waiting a good while for UK prices to drop that low.
edit: Plus I was able to sign up to UK PSN a couple of days before launch and SCEE sent me a Casino Royale blu-ray for being one of the first to do so.
Is it just me or did anyone else really hate the imagery they used for the Gamestation brand?I almost forgot. I found some old leaflets in the back of the shop today that I figure will give you guys a good giggle;
It looks so fucking bad, it's like they are trying to beat you over the head with "Guys look we are a hardcore game shop for hardcore gamers".
I mean just look at their website (Granted this is from last year since the site is down now but I remember it looking the same if not similar). It's probably the worst website I've seen for a high street shop.
They were selling it to you for less than it costed to make, you can hardly call that highway robbery. Expensive yes.
Psychotext
Member
In fairness it really was highway robbery vs what most of the rest of the world was paying. There was a lot of analysis at the time and even with VAT taken into account it was still noticeably overpriced.
Wait, I'm not the only Bromley GAFer?
The Gamestation is where the old Electronics Boutique (what a great name that was) was. It was previously a Game, and then the Gamestation down the road closed and re-opened in there. Anyway, yeah - it's closed down now.
Post it anyway, I'd be interested in reading it and I'm sure plenty of others would as well. Anyone who isn't can just scroll down a bit.
Huw_Dawson
Member
I remember seeing that from before I lived in Accrington - around 1998 or so. So cool. Then when we moved there it'd been packed up and probably thrown in a storage room somewhere.
Accy's town centre is pretty poor now, but it still has the important stuff. And only two pound stores actually. The Lancashire Tea place that I went to last summer was amazing. But there are a whole lot of empty units now, and a few units that seem to rotate through a bunch of crap stores that open and close quickly. Once you get out of Broadway you basically enter Poverty City.
There's a replacement for Game/Gamestation that's already been set up at the orange Grainger place inside the shopping centre, so fortunately I've still got a local place to grab oldish trade-ins to keep me occupied. Grainger are going to have a FIELD DAY over this. They've only been operating for something like two years, damn near forced their own collapse with the drunken antics of their bosses a while back, and now they're in a position to be the only game shop in poor town centres.
Basically the place is totally out-competed by the internet and easy access to Manchester.
jufonuk
not tag worthy
SE London GAF Hello.
I hope the Eltham Gamestation is still around, Woolwich has closed
Xun & Mr Sam are Bromley GAFfers? Awesome, I live a bus ride away from Bromley
(hope the remaining stores get bought out)
Looks like it will be Amazon, CEX and Gamefocus for me now on, oh and the odd HMV
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