GameStop Looks Nothing Like It Did 10 Years Ago

GameStop was founded in 1984 and later acquired by Barnes & Noble in 1999 for $215 million, as rereported by Game Rant. It later went public in 2002. According to GameStop, through the company’s SEC disclosures form, there were 4,816 stores in operation in January of 2021. Statista notes that in 2012, U.S. Sales figures were over $6 billion (with another $1.6 billion in Europe), in the decade since, net sales have dropped to $3.4 billion and $789 million, respectively.

Years ago, GameStop was the singular market dominator in U.S. physical games sales, and young people would flock to malls and other retail locations to get their hands on the next great gaming release. Console games were a particular strength for GameStop and any other retailer scraping out sales in this industry. Consoles like Xbox One and PlayStation 4 came out in 2013, and these early 2010s were some of the most iconic for gamers. Consoles were pushing what could be accomplished to their extremes, and consoles could render amazing graphics and perform immense feats of technical mastery. Yet, with still-limited storage capacity, gaming remained somewhat immune to the tidal wave of streaming and cloud-based supremacy that had effectively taken over audio and visual media formats.