Anyone ever shop at CEX?

Do you find their stores to be stinking rat pits, staffed by seemingly un-managed children too?

This could also be related to Origin. GAME tried to throw their weight around and get games delayed on Steam so people couldn't buy it there before they could in store in the UK. If they tried the same with EA, EA may of them to get bent.

ho boy, sounds like the beggining of the end

I don't live in UK but I am glad That I just get all my games from Amazon and Steam.

The future of gaming is online and called "Pay 2 play"

In 20yrs time owning things like games,movies & music will be History.

I never forgot when GAME screwed me over after buying a faulty ds lite, haven't bought anything there since.

I had a good sum of store credit for Game but thankfully I spent it all on UFC 3

That has to be the most generic store name I've heard heard of. GAME? Really?

Oh no, I guess now I have to buy all my games online for way less money, and put up with them showing up at my house before their official release dates. OH WAIT, I ALREADY DO.

Maybe EA just wants them to get a better name.

@Krokodile said:

Pleeeeease let this happen to Gamestop.

yeah people losing their jobs is awesome!

@BaconBuTTy said:

Anyone ever shop at CEX?

Do you find their stores to be stinking rat pits, staffed by seemingly un-managed children too?

Yes and yes!

I'll be sad to see Game go. I get 90% of my purchases there and apart from the odd game which comes out between £40- £45 I find most are at the usual £39.99, I've always found HMV to be more expensive. The staff are all pretty cool in my local one too, I'll usually have a chat with them about the latest releases and they talk to me as a fellow gamer and not a sales person.

Im always using there trade in too, I trade most games in within a few weeks of buying so that the value is still high and then have the credit put on a gift card so I can use it for the next release I actually want rather than having to get something then and there (or within 1 month at CEX). So really I rarely spend over 15 or 20 quid on a game this way and I like that!

Im too impatient to order online, if I want game, I want game NOW!

Good thing i'm using my current £40 credit on SSX on Friday! Was worried they might not be stocking this when I saw the headline but i'm guessing they are probably sitting in stores already.

Sad to see that happen. I guess the big box stores are all stocking ME3 for people in the UK. Sucks to see niche stores have trouble like this. I know Gamestop gets a bad rap, but I go in there from time to time just to browse. Much better than going to BB or Walmart to browse. Gamestop usually has some hard-to-find games in the used section.

@DStason said:

That has to be the most generic store name I've heard heard of. GAME? Really?

It used to be called Electronic Boutique, I'll let you decide which is better.

& I am severely pissed about this news, I really wanted the N7 edition having missed out on prior CE's. I doubt i'll be able to get it from other stores either since it's pretty close to release and chances are they'll all be sold out..

"EA Sports... it's not in the GAME."

Yeah, that was bad.

Managed to cement my collectors edition this morning from ShopTo.

Looks like the Xbox 360 and PC versions of it are pretty much sold out on all fronts at this point.

Well ain't that some shit.

I was genuinely sad to read this story this morning as unfortunately I believe this is the beginning of the end for GAME. Having been a customer from an early age, I have purchased some of my all time favorite games from their store.

What saddens me more is that I had the privilege to work for the company over christmas as a temp and was offered a full time job only for these events to occur and be told that they are no longer able to recruit. My time at the company was highly enjoyable and the staff were fantastic, some of the nicest people i've ever met with a great interest and knowledge in the medium of Video Games, contrary to what you may read/hear on the internet.

Admittedly prices are higher than a lot of other places, which is a great shame as this has eventually led to their downfall. However, what needs to be understood is that prices are high due to the market they are competing with. High street retail stores compete with other retail stores and online compete with online, whilst supermarket prices are generally lower as the chances of you buying other items in store means they will make more money off you. The problems of the online prices undercutting retail prices is evident when you see that it is not only GAME and Gamestation that are in trouble but also HMV, another electronic media retailer that has been around for many years.

It would be a huge shame to see Game stores disappear from the high street, as for many it is a great way of interacting with other gamers and sharing stories on a face to face basis, and lets be honest, a bit of one to one customer service with a discussion of your gaming experience is surely better than simply clicking 'Checkout' on an online store.

I just wish GAME all the best in the recovery of the company, especially all of my ex-colleagues at the Chester store who make a huge effort to ensure that customers leave the store happy and enjoy returning for more stories, laughs, great customer service and most of all to purchase more fantastic games to keep the company afloat.

@Cramsy said:

@Krokodile said:

Pleeeeease let this happen to Gamestop.

yeah people losing their jobs is awesome!

The idea of Gamestop is fine, the way they do their business is the problem. I don't want people to lose their job, but no company deserves to thrive with tactics and morals like theirs.

@BoOzak: Despite being owned by gamestop, theyre still EB here in canada.

Serves them right, under stocking, over priced, deceptive, oppressive hate machine who buy out the competition then market them like they don't own them.

Anyone in the UK should be using www.play.com

I worked for game whilst going through college, it was great at the time as I had grown up buying all my games from there starting with the Amiga in the early nineties, I stopped shopping there a couple of years though as they started getting really pushy with preowned and other add ons but it will be sad to see them go, they are the last large specialist video game chain in the uk (excluding game station which they own)

@Goldanas: it's a very good service, nice store, plenty of random options of what to purchase, what they do wrong is that well they sell most new games at 40-45 pound, while other places such as tesco, play.com, asda, etc sell games at 35-40 pounds so not many people go in there to purchase games from them, they also give tons of cash for 2nd hand games and barely get much back in return, i remember years ago trading in a copy of condemned 2 for 25 quid and seeing it a few days later for the same price i traded it in for brand new

but yeah great employees, sometimes real good deals, nice customer points reward card scheme, just need to make their other pricing models work better for them

they must be ready to go into "administration" (or whatever you call it across the pond), if their solution is to STOP stocking games that sell

Wow, that giant "NOOOOOPE".

Way to make it look like a Kotaku article.

@dekkadekkadekka: Whenever I do, it's immeasurably pleasing.

If they go under it's going to suck and that's coming from someone who works for their competition (HMV). I get that everybody likes to buy stuff cheaper online, but it would be a real shame if we couldn't still walk into a store and browse and walk out with a product immediately.

So, many, fucking, commas.

Time to cash in my £11 credit. What should I buy? I have an Xbox 360, Windows gaming rig & Amstrad GX4000.

Feel sorry for all their emplyees atm, a big retailer going out of business regardless how you feel about them isn't good for alot of people.

Not the first retailer to do that. In Canada a lot of chains have started to kill video games and send the bulk of their stock to one or more flagship stores...

I wonder what this means for GAME in Australia.

Well I hope they hold on long enough so I can still get my £22 Diablo III pre-order. ^^

still cannot find the n7 collector's edition for 360 in stock anywhere. complete debacle.

Right, well as far as I'm now concerned Game and EA can go and fuck themselves.

I preoredered the ME3 N7 Collector's Edition from Game because Game always pull these bullshit deals where they are the only - or one of the few - stores that get the collector's editions of games.

I would normally order from Amazon but they aren't selling the N7 edition (in the UK at least) because of these fucking deals that the publishers work out with the stores.

This is why Game is going under, because of shitty service.

I preordered the collector's edition as soon as it became available MONTHS ago because I knew it would sell out and now, only a week before the game comes out Game cancel all the preorders for it and it's sold out everywhere else in the UK.

I will never buy another game from Game and I know others that are saying the same. So way to cement your store going out of business Game. Well done.

I'm always surprised to read about gamers still shopping in GAME. Especially because I read about it on the internet, where they must have the internet, connected to the internet. On the internet.

What I think i'm trying to say is ...ShopTo.net

Oh man, absolutely everywhere else is now sold out of the N7 edition.

Dammit. =(

Fuck game, they bought the best game retailer in norway - Spiderman they were called. Their logo was mickey mouse in a spiderman suit, i have no idea how that logo didn't get them into legal trouble.

No wonder Game is going out of business with their policies. I went to pick up Skyrim on launch day, i did not preorder because fuck that. When i went to game the gentleman behind the desk informed me that "yeah, you should have preordered" because they were appearantly out of stock for us regular non-preordering guys. So i went over to gamestop and got a copy there, and they had plenty left. I don't know why you don't stock up on one of the biggest games of the year.

I wish Spiderman was still around.

@Bantamoose said:

Well I hope they hold on long enough so I can still get my £22 Diablo III pre-order. ^^

Thanks for mentioning that, I completely forgot I had the Diablo 3 CE ordered there, and almost everywhere else has sold out of it. I really don't want to miss that one, so I've just changed my order. Phew.

For anyone still looking for the ME3 one, have you tried Gamestop, Blockbuster or Sainsburies? I hear they still have stock.

GAME have for a long time been terrible, of course I mean no disrespect to its staff, but as a company they thrived off consumer ignorance targeting parents/jocks/histpers. They charge full RRP, when HMV or a mom/pop store will be selling the same game for £4-5 cheaper. 
 
They were once decent and competitve (90's - early 2000's) when they had competiton from the likes of Future Zone and EB, so brought those companies out one by one. Their entire business strategy post 2000/02 was to try and monopolise the market, and only succeeded in disrespecting and driving away consumers. Then the market changed with online shops becoming more common and supermarkets stocking games as well (and loss leading on big titles like CoD/FIFA), GAME failed to changed their business strategy and so end up in this position. Greed was their game and they lost.

Damn! I nearly took a job there before Christmas! Glad I didn't but this is really bad news :( I've been going to this place since it was an Electronics Boutique. Time to cash in my reward points then :(

I hope they don't go under, them being one of the better places to get games and the good people they employ.

Ordering online from them for 5years has been issue free. Pre orders were nearly always 1 day early, pre order bonuses better than Amazon, cheaper overall. Plus the earned points per game is a bonus.

Competition is always a good thing for the consumer, agree the retail side was god awful, sad loss as far as I'm concerned if this goes to its logical conclusion.

ME3 had pushed me to the ever reliable Amazon.

Can't wait for GAME to die. Hopefully Gamestation will go with it.

This is pretty nuts. Be interested to see how this affects GameStation as they are owned by GAME. I've bought a few things from there for launch events but most games are just cheaper online now. Will have to make a point of going in and spending my reward points before they stop accepting them I guess.

GAME appeared briefly in Brisbane, Australia - I saw two GAME Stores open directly opposite EB (what Gamestop is called here) - and both failed utterly within 6 months. The reason? Despite being the newcomer, most of their games, even the second hand ones, were usually a few dollars more expensive than at any other nearby store. Yeah, that's right - they thought they could just open up directly next to a well-established, decades old competitor and charge higher.

The staff knew next to nothing about games and were hired solely for their looks (both the men and the women) and they didn't help customers, except if they were middle-aged mums and dads trying to buy a game for their kid, which in that case they'd swarm over them and offer them ludicrously overpriced "deals" and "scratch" insurance.

I bought precisely one game at GAME, and I never went back there. Sure, EB are just as gouge-tastic as GAME used to be, but at least the staff in EB occasionally know a little about games. Sometimes.

Being an employee of GAME I can say I am absolutely disgusted by this as not a week ago we were told "we won't be stocking The Last Story so we can secure more Mass Effect 3". If I didn't have a £177 gift card at the store I'd do all my ordering online (which I will be doing with ShopTo after my GC has been spent on the SW 360 bundle)

I wasn't going to pick up ME3 on the day anyway but knowing the amount of preorders we have taken I can definitely say I am not looking forward to work on the 9th. Terrible move by the company

@X19: You say that, but up here in the North of Scotland (and quite a few other places, no doubt) there is only a Game and a Gamestation. If they go then there is literally nowhere else selling games.

I know, I know - "Order online etc." - but sometimes it's nice to browse in a shop.