With Australians now spending over a billion dollars per annum on games, big retailers are realising the value of game sales, and are increasing their shelf space and marketing to chase the gamer dollar. But before games were big business, dedicated games stores were few and far between, existing as enthusiast, and almost hobby shops. While many local independent games stores have struggled to stay afloat with the increased competition, GameTraders has been in business for 7 years now and in that time has grown to 40 stores as a franchise business, with Queensland proving the biggest growing market.
In the interview, GameTraders Managing Director Mark Langford discusses the game retailer market, particularly the lucrative second hand market and how they leveraging that to remain competitive, competition from overseas game retailers such as EB and Game, and how digital distribution is changing the path of games to consumers.
The problem is, the games are getting so big just to download now. The service providers will have to increase the bandwidth substantially. So it might be long term, maybe 15 or 20 years no one will go out to retail stores and buy everything online, we don't know. But we still think people want to get out there, they enjoy getting out there and reading the back of a box, talking about them.