Looks like Electronic Arts aren’t too happy about a certain “major european retail partner”, reports this morning suggesting that company boss John Riccitiello isn’t feeling all that confident.
He doesn’t specifically name GAME, but after reports yesterday mentioned their current financial situation, it’s not hard to make the assumption that that’s who he’s referring to.
“We are concerned with the financial condition of one of our major European retail partners,” said Riccitiello during an investors conference call overnight, “which could lead to both increased bad debt and lost sales.”
“We are focused on some isolated European retailer issues that have recently been announced,” added Chief Financial Officer Eric Brown. “A negative outcome could adversely affect our Q4 results.”
GAME yesterday was apparently cutting back on Mass Effect 3 pre-orders.
lewis815
Why don’t retailers fight with online stores a little bit more? I understand that they have the overheads of the actual store and staff etc to keep running so they need the profit… But I would think they would get a lot more turnover if they lowered their prices a bit more? I for one would head down to Game (and other retailers) all the time if they were just a few quid max above what the online sellers are going for, and I’d be happy to pay the little extra because a) no delivery costs and b) no waiting for the game itself.
Maybe I don’t quite understand how this all works financially, but I’d imagine the more people they get in to their stores the more money they will make, even if they are making a little less profit on each sale.
mypetfrog
Strangely HMV has only last week had their banking crisis held off for a year as banks restructured their debt after support form the movie and music industries. Probably only staving off the inevitable though, shocking prices both online and in store!
Game however seem just arrogant in their approach. They are very expensive, discounts are pretty poor and taking the PS Vita pre-order situation this week… their Facebook page was screaming about how Amazon and Morrisons were offering great deals – deals that made Game’s offerings look useless. Their response was to do absolutely nothing.
Went into a store today and asked about pre-oder bundles and was told there aren;t any, and blamed Sony for not “allowing” them to make any up.
How can a store be so arrogant to think it can ratch up prices and still sell hardware and software that’s for sale by Amazon and the supermarkets for much less.
The management just don’t seem to care. Feel sorry for the shop staff, generally helpful (if misguided fanboys at times) and unfortunately THEy are the ones who will suffer if the Game management screw it all up.!
:(