We have heard for years that GameStop said that the retail gaming store might soon find its exit because the sales are continually dropping. After all, the industry moves more and more towards digital sales. The chain didn’t really manage to keep its fans when the management decided that they were simply an essential business during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic when they did everything in their power to prove that their stores should stay open anyway.
They did take a massive hit because of the virus, and right now, we’re expecting a report with significant financial losses for the first quarter. We will hear about the full financial results on the 9th of June, but a preliminary report has shown that the company has lost about $162-$172 million. Let’s see what that means through a comparison. In Q1 of 2019, they saw a profit of $6.8 million.
However, the virus didn’t only bring bad news from GameStop. They have stated recently that they have experienced an increase of 1500% in online sales between the 1st of March on the 10th of April. This is actually the best performance since they launched the Nintendo Wii console back in 2008.
Of course, GameStop is not the only company that has been affected by the virus. The pandemic had a massive impact on their business, that’s for sure, and the second quarter might be rough too. Even if they started to reopen the stores recently with 85% of their US locations and 90% of their international stores open, the situation does not look good.
Because of the protests happening right now in the United States, GameStop has closed 90 stores, and 30 of those will probably remain closed until further notice because of the damage. So the company will now have work even harder in order to find good times in the recent future, and we’re curious to see how the next few months will play out for them.
