I'm hoping to see more of Grainger Games after things have settled down.

Really?

So your perception of an organisation rests on a few arsehole individuals? Yeah sounds about right for you.

The problem with high street retail for any company, big or small, is still uncompetetive business rates (which I don't see the govt. doing anything about) and the price of town centre retail units to rent vs. out of town commercial lock-ups (and the last few years have shown that private landlords would apparently rather leave retail units sat empty than lower their rents).

If we still want to have a high street in a decade's time these are the things that need to change - high overheads make it nigh on impossible to compete with online shopping. It's not as though the high street doesn't try to compete, it just literally can't compete and still remain profitable.

The few arseholes the company itself chose to represent itself. More put off by their pathetic excuse for an apology. Companies make mistakes, it is how you deal with them that matters.

Unrealistic models for high street finances are definitely a huge part of the problem, but ultimately I don't mind the high street vanishing entirely when the service it provides is as poor as that of my local game shops. The problems with GAME's level of service and organisational decisions have been going on for a long time.

Mobile phone shops, coffee shops and clothing retailers will still hang around as people seem to like visiting them in droves for the experience, but the increasingly watered down world of high street shopping for entertainment products isn't worth mourning IMO. I used to live in a smaller town with a lot of independent specialist shops, and it was fantastic. The shop workers would bend over backwards to keep their customers happy and interested. Nothing like today's chain shops which carry none of the products I want to buy on the spot, staffed by charming students who occasionally play a little Xbox but don't really care about their jobs much. It all feels so empty and shallow. Expertise and dedication are criminally undervalued skills.

R

I would agree with that Rui. I haven't purchased a game from a store for ages and play has always provided me with good service. On the offchance a store has the DVD or game I want, it is invariably stupidly overpriced, which means I'm often forced to essentially waste money if I'm given a gift card for the store.

See, I don't want the high street to die because I actually quite like the experience of being in a city, whether I buy anything or not. I wish things were cheaper on the high street so I could buy them there without feeling like a shmuck. My usual shopping trips now seem to consist of an £8 rail fare, £6 on lunch and then maybe a book from Waterstones (which I would be wary of getting dented in the post) and a second-hand game from CEX. I'll then come home and order things I saw in HMV and Game for at least a third less online. Ten years ago I'd have come home with a bag of CDs and DVDs from any combination of HMV, Virgin and Music Zone, a game (probably from Game) and a book or two from Waterstones or Borders. I miss all these chains which have fallen by the wayside and would love nothing more than for our high streets to be full of diversity and competition again.

If the high street does indeed die a terrible death then I think anyone who owns property in these areas will be in for a shock. If it gets to the stage where we no longer have identifiable town centres with a heavy retail presence, then town centre property values (both commercial and residential) are going to plummet.

I went to my nearest city centre last Saturday - after a 35 minute walk to get there I went in the bank to put a couple of cheques in & draw some money out. I then walked back home. Around 8 or 9 times out of 10 that is my high street experience (even when I do stay longer it usually amounts to nothing more than window shopping).

Granted I was in a hurry to get back to listen to the football on the radio but over the past few months other than supermarkets the only high street places I have spent money are Thorntons and a card shop for Christmas cards. Everything else I have purchased online.

I hasn't helped that most I of the places I spent money have closed down coupled with the company I work for moving from the city centre (used to have an hours lunch where I could buy stuff like cds/dvds etc) to an out of city centre business park.

10 years ago I would likely have purchased a book/cd/dvd/video game most weeks during my lunch break and there were some weeks where I'd buy as many as 10 manga books as well as an anime magazine such as Newtype USA from either Forbidden Planet or Travelling Man. Both have since shut up shop and left the city (it's been 3 years now since they went).

A choice between going to another city (never sure if what I want is in stock) or buying online - thats an easy choice for me.

Again, high property prices are a serious problem. Were I a billionaire my contribution to Britain would be to build enormous residential tower block after enormous residential tower block and let the flats at well below market rate, gradually lowering the cost of property across the board. I'd live off the wails of home-owners, who would be better off defaulting on their mortgages and renting from me. When they did that, I'd buy up the de-valued property from the banks and rent it out at a similarly cheap rate.

Finally, when 90% of the population lived in housing provided by me I'd run for election and promise to cut rents even further if I won, but threaten to put them up if I lost. Then, ultimate power. Heh. But I'm getting a little ahead of myself...

Only for specific markets, things like food shops and clothes shops will still litter the high street and odd trinket shops that i'm not entirely sure how they are still alive now will no doubt survive harder times than huge companies. So in one regard the high street will stay more or less the same, the demand is there and the internet isn't a full replacement for clothes stores yet so i don't see high streets disappearing anytime in the next 10 years.

However stores like Game will have to adapt to survive, as they have lost their foot in the market as being dedicated games stores that you can get pre-orders from they will have to compete against stores such as CEX who are 100% pre-owned sales. However the 1Up that CEX has is that it deals in all sorts of tech (sat navs, palmtops, laptops, pc's, dvds, cd's) not just games and bluray/HD's.

As for my typical town habits when i worked in luton i would do to greggs to get food, then CEX next door to check out prices of games and dvd's, walked round to HMV and compared prices - made mental notes of dvd's or films i might like then went next door to GAME, checked over the prices against CEX and HMV in my mind then walked down to the Gamestation to compare prices further usually bought from CEX because of the best prices or only bought from GAME if i knew i had cash on my reward card and it was on offer.

So far i can only see CEX competing against the online market, with free delivery its already securing a good position against Ebay and Amazon's marketplaces. The other main difference with GAME and CEX is that with CEX you get a years free cover for if the unit breaks, buying a preowned console from GAME i'm lead to believe that you have to pay for cover.

Personally, I think the problem with GAME is that they didn't even try to adapt to the changing market. Yes, it would have been too much to ask them to lower their prices so they can compete with online, but they could have done other things instead.

One example is grabbing more in-store exclusives. The only ones I can remember were the Pokémon pre-order figures for Platinum and one at an event a few years ago where you received an Arceus figure if you purchased something Pokémon related. They did have pre-order figures for HeartGold and SoulSilver, but they were online only (they didn't advertise that it was online only! Got conned out of a Ho-Oh figure 9.9).

If they had nabbed the rights to more exclusive pre-order bonuses or limited editions that meant people had to purchase in-store (especially for large franchises like Pokémon), that could have really helped sales.

I really liked the pre-orders they did for Pokemon. I remember when Pokemon Emerald was up for preorder with a free figure at Gamestation, so I preordered it there, and when I went to buy it, when it came out, they let me have 4 figures instead of the one. Got a free Palkia stylus when I preorded Pearl from Game, same with the Giritina figure and Platinum.

I remember the event with the Arceus figure, they kept telling people it was a preorder bonus, so I went to the till and bought a Pokemon capsule toy and show them the leaflet so I got my free Arceus figure. Already had a preorder at Gamestation so I got the free Lugia figure.

I pre-ordered my HeartGold in-store to get the Arceus, but I pre-ordered my SoulSilver online, so I got my Lugia...not the Ho-Oh though >>

Got my platinum at GameStop in New York with a holographics DS case. Never once used it and I doubt I'd use a figure either...

The things I'm a sucker for are slipcovers and steelbooks. Same in DVDs as well as games (and even books for slipcovers).

Anyway I'm really disappointed that these fire sale prices don't seem to be happening in central London, that or everythign was already bought up. Crossing my fingers for a good buyout though.

Anyone else notice the pattern of zavvi buying out virgin megastores... months later goes bust, fopp buying out a lot of music stores.... months later going bust (and now operates only about 5 stores out of 50ish?), HMV buys most of Fopp... ends up having to close all the stores back down again, GAME buys gamestation... big trouble.
Why did anyone think it was a good idea to expand to that level in this climate?