We constantly ask ourselves “who won the console war?” Is Sony selling more PS4’s than Microsoft is selling Xbox Ones? Well, our opinion has always been “it doesn’t really matter” considering the only one who benefits from “winning” the console war is the console manufacturer. However, we were wrong. It’s not the console manufacturers that are profiting the most from this war, it’s GameStop.
According to a recently released GameStop earnings report, the video game dealer made over $3.68 billion dollars last quarter. Yes… last QUARTER ! It earned that much money in only three months. To be completely honest, it made most of that money during the 9 week Holiday period, $3.15 billion exactly! Considering that most console manufactuers are selling their consoles even or at a loss, that amount of revenue is pretty insane. Over last year, the retailer logged over $9.04 billion in global sales.
Many analysts thought that GameStop would go the way of Blockbuster when digital distribution services became more common, but the retailer is not phased. “While cloud-based delivery of video games is innovative and potentially revolutionary, the gaming consumer has not yet demonstrated that it is ready to adopt this type of service to the level that a sustainable business can be created around it,” GameStop said in a statement. “Also, we recognize that our strength is in helping our vendor partners connect with gamers, so we will focus our energy on selling existing services, such as PlayStation Now, through our retail channels.”
Source: Gamestop