There’s no real debate that, by and large, physical brick and mortar stores are in a bad spot. With the increasing sales of digital and people choosing to shop online, it’s put those stores on the decline. Maybe no other entity shows that more than GameStop, who have been on the bad side of financial news for awhile now, and it doesn’t look like this year is looking significantly different.
In talking about the company’s Q1 2019 results, we see that global sales have decreased 13.3% YoY (year-over-year), with net income falling starkly 76% YoY, which includes a 35% decrease of hardware sales, said to be only that low due to stronger than expected Nintendo Switch sales. It comes with a less sharp 4.3% drop in software sale. The only thing that was up was collectibles which saw a 10.5% increase in sales. This includes data of a 13 week period ending on May 4th.
In some ways, this being an overall down year isn’t totally unexpected. The current generation of consoles is winding down (with the exception of the Switch, which is entering its peak year) and it’s natural to expect a downtime as people prep for new hardware. But this has been a continuous cycle for the company and with retail being reshaped to very digital and internet focused, hard to see a good path forward. It’ll be interesting to see if they can pull the head up in time.