The Ultimate Gaming Experience : Buy Their Stocks

After the acquisition of EB Games, GameStop rose as the leading video game retailer in its industry. In an effort to sustain their position, GameStop will have to tackle several technological and sociocultural issues that have arisen from its competitive environment. The strategic objective we wish to accomplish in this analysis is to formulate a viable strategy that will continue GameStop’s growth in the industry to remain as the go to video gaming store for the video gaming enthusiast.

The lifestyle of a hardcore gamer is to be antisocial around human beings, but through the connectivity of the Internet to be social and build friendships and relationships through video games. Xbox has created a live chat while playing video games to verbally speak to the gamers or instantly chat. The social class gamer is divided by the income category that they fall on. Upper and middle class have the ability to spend money on new consoles in the gaming industry, while the lower class does not have the funds to invest in all of the new consoles that are released. The most important key point of the demographic component is the behavior of a gamer. It is important to have a strategic target plan for any new consoles; however, behavior gamers are the marketing targets to any new innovation. Behavior gamers are the most loyal consumers and it has a significant amount of the profitability to the company. As a result, the three different components makes up the target market and is very crucial to be strategic with the plan and know the potential

Barnes & Noble does business -- big business -- by the book. As the #1 bookseller in the US, it operates about 650 superstores throughout 49 states and the District of Columbia under the banners Barnes & Noble, Bookstop, and Bookstar, as well as about 200 mall stores using the names B. Dalton, Doubleday, and Scribner's. The company's GameStop subsidiary is the #1 US video game retailer with about 1,500 stores under the names Babbage's Etc., GameStop, and FuncoLand. Barnes & Noble owned about 75% of online book seller barnesandnoble.com after purchasing Bertelsmann's interest in 2003; Barnes & Noble then purchased all remaining shares and took the company private in May 2004.

The mainstream gamer enjoys games but may not finish every game they buy and doesn't have time for long MMO (Massive Multiplayer Online) quests. The mainstream gamer represents approx. 15% of the gaming market.

401 Games has a wide variety of customers due to extensive amount of diverse games that are offered in their store. When analyzing 401 Games as a whole, we decided on two determining variables and one qualifying variable for the best target market. We chose buying behavior and loyalty status as our two determining variables. For our qualifying variable, we selected location.

Best Buy is a multinational retailer of consumer electronics, computing and mobile phone products, entertainment products, appliances, and related services. The company operates retail stores and call centers and conducts online retail operations under a variety of brand names such as Best Buy, Best Buy Mobile, The Carphone Warehouse, Five Star, Future Shop, Geek Squad, Magnolia Audio Video, Pacific Sales, and The Phone House (Bestbuy.com, 4). The domestic segment consists of all operations within the United States, while the international segment includes all operations in Canada, Europe, Mexico, and China. The Best Buy 's success is contingent on the market 's demand for electronics. The company 's strategy is to provide good customer service combined with lower prices (news.cnet.com). Best Buy 's success is directly related to economic conditions, the cost of goods, and other things like fuel prices. The company 's strategy depends upon the ability to offer customers a broad selection of name-brand products; therefore, leading its success to depend upon satisfactory supplier relationships (Bestbuy.com, 8). Best Buy, as it is included in the retail segment, is a seasonal store. Their stronger quarter is the fourth quarter, which they can contribute to the holiday season for their success.

The market for board games has seen annual increases of 10-20 per cent over the last decade, leading some to suggest we are in a “board game renaissance” (Carlson, 2013).

To attempt counteract this cyclical slowdown, EB games have introduced an ever-growing variety of accessories with games to increase the revenue raising capacity of their respective consoles, as well as maintaining the loyalty and attention of a fickle gaming public. Some types of games have been released, with specialty controllers to great success, mitigating the expected lull in sales in the lead-up to new consoles. Recently however, the competition has become slightly skewed. Nintendo’s newfound dominance of the market is causing some headaches for Sony and Microsoft.

With the competition in the video games industry getting more intense, the next steps of the video game companies become more crucial for their positioning on the market. Due to the low product differentiation, the next market leader will be the platform provider that manages to offer an innovative gaming experience and a wider population of buyers that include all demographics. Although the industry is being totally dominated by Nintendo’s console, the industry is still considered to show a

Future growth expectations for the Video Games industry have been significantly moderated, as the picture of the market for gaming on mobile platforms becomes clearer. Since mobile games are sold at much lower prices compared to traditional console and PC games, their rise may foretell a slowdown of the video game market in the United States. While the recent launch of the next generation video game consoles is expected to rekindle interest in the more expensive console gaming market, the rise of low-cost, low-margin mobile gaming market may weigh on the overall gaming market. Consequently, this is expected to pull revenue downward as consumers pay less per hour for gaming entertainment. Revenue is expected to reach $47.4 billion in 2019 as a result of the expanding population and an increased percentage of Americans

The stock market game assignment was a new learning experience. The simulation gave us $100,000.00 to buy and sell domestic equities. The guidelines made the game a bit more straightforward by not allowing students to trade certain items. This assignment gave students the opportunity to see how the trading market works. Overall the stock market game assignment was a great way for any student to learn how the market works by having hands on experience with buying and trading their own stocks.

EPOC will gain more profit if it is console-enabled only, when compared with PC-enabled only. The retail sales console game is almost five times more than PC game as we can see from Exhibit 8 in this case. The retail sales of console software game is 6.6 billions of dollars, but PC is only 0.9 billions of dollars in 2007. Moreover, from this exhibit, we can see that the number of PC software game retail sale is decreasing year by year, from 1 billions of dollars to 0.7 billions of dollars in 4 years. Most of consumer purchases a

They will readily shop at the competitors, valuing convenience and price point most of all. They respond to store promotions and strong holiday advertising campaigns, especially for new games/releases.

The role of technology is vital in this industry as it focuses on technological efforts for competitive advantage. Every new development uses new technology. Though there are restricted innovations in the gaming industry, the speed of technological transfer is very high. Nintendo’s role from playing cards to toys to video games and then with each console introduced, included many technological changes. Technological up gradation increased hardware costs and discouraged innovation. The online capability of Nintendo Wii was a major change in the technology of the video game industry though they were not able to do as well as their competitors (Sony, Microsoft).

The video game console industry is a very competitive segment. This segment requires a keen eye on product development as well as strategic product marketing and a rather large logistics arm to ensure rapid distribution to targeted areas. Video game industry in the US, which is hugely driven by retail sales of software and hardware, registered revenues of USD ~ million in CY'2012. Even so with the advent of new video game players in the industry, the revenues decreased by 11.7% compared to