It's strange, isn't it? With Sony that it's sold some 3.9 million PlayStation 3s over Christmas, you'd think it would be a great time right now to be a videogame retailer. But that's not the case for historic UK retailer HMV. The company as a whole has been struggling for a while, but this Christmas has hit it particularly hard, with videogame market share down some ♒16% from last year. And now it's gone on record to say it's looking into cutting back its games catalogue. Ouch.
Despite getting in on the pre-owned games trade (and offering to beat any local trade-in price by £1 in our local store), its still seeing its market share eaten away by supermarkets and online retailers. HMV's chief executive, Simon Fox, : "I thi♔nk one of the things we will do is look at what percent of games should make up as part of the mix".
According to The T♌elegraph, Mr Fox said it might be the company's policy to only sell a selection of best-selling new games and not "the long tail of older software."
Above: HMV's Oxford Street store - presumably full of old games depreciating in value
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Justin was a GamesRadar staffer for 10 years but is now ♌a freelancer, musician and videographer. He's big on retro, Sega and racing games (especially retro Sega racing games) and currently also writes for Play Magazine, Traxion.gg, PC Gamer and TopTenReviews, as well as running his own YouTube channel. Having learned to love all platforms equally after Sega left the hardware industry (sniff), his favourite games include Christmas NiGHTS into Dreams, Zeld🦹a BotW, Sea of Thieves, Sega Rally Championship and Treasure Island Dizzy.
