Oh there's no question - if you think about the console launches, there will be digital bundles with these new consoles that didn't exist before. I think there will be more people doing that, not less.ĭo you think these bundles will have more potential with fresh hardware, like the Wii U? But the future - bundling hardware with online services and bundles is a great idea. We like it, and we think we could be more aggressive with it, but Microsoft wants to move slowly with it, and that's okay. We have, but it's very early, very preliminary. Has GameStop seen a lot of success with that? It's a very preliminary test, a concept, but the idea was "can you imitate what the phone guys have done with bundling service with hardware?" Speaking of subscriptions, Microsoft recently looped GameStop into its subsidized $99 Xbox 360 deal. If you are trying to provide your customers with a bundle that comes with a pre-owned phone and will allow them to play games, make calls, and everything else - you don't have to have a network to do that you can sell SIM cards and pre-paid plans, those things exist, and we are in the process of testing several to see which ones makes sense. If we can sell them a pre-paid smartphone that has Kongregate pre-loaded on it, then we will do that. The idea is to have customers come in, buy a used phone - and if we can sell them a pre-paid SIM plan, then that's great. What we are testing, and have been for a while, is selling pre-paid phone services and SIM cards with different providers. Somebody left it up on the server, and people assumed that we were getting into the network business, but we're not. We aren't trying to hide that or anything, but I don't want to mislead people. It wasn't even an idea being pitched, it was just a creative mockup that got out there and was picked up by the media. So GameStop Mobile was part of an internal proposal? We do marketing mockups of products and different things, so that was not a real product page we don't intend to launch that. (Laughing) Yeah, somebody pulled that somewhere. What happened there? Did somebody pull the switch too soon? We noticed back in May when page for "GameStop Mobile" briefly went live, and then was quickly taken down. If you want to trade your camera lenses, we take those at BuyMyTronics. So we acquired a company called BuyMyTronics, which is an online marketplace based in Denver, and that's where we're putting all the expanded assortment. Small stores, limited staff, and they are video games stores after all. Here's the thing, though - you can't over-complicate these stores. There are a lot of online players, but not in stores - so we found this was a real opportunity. There's nobody in the US - there's a couple in Europe - there's nobody in the US who really does a good job of offering a place to recycle and dispose of your electronics, in a store. We took it national this year customers tell us they love it. Then we went to 200 stores to see if we could try to sell those devices. In our refurbishing facility we were able to reverse-engineer and learn about refurbishing iDevices. We hit on this about two years ago and asked ourselves, "What's keeping us from refurbishing and recycling other kinds of electronics?" We then went to our PowerUp Rewards community and did some surveys, looking to find out how many members have old iPods and iDevice's they'd like to trade in and, lo and behold, there was a lot of them! So, we began the program in pilot, in Dallas, during May of 2011, and went national in September. So, for a long time, we had customers coming in the stores saying "Hey, I want to buy Call of Duty," or "I want to buy a new PS3," asking "would you take my old phone in trade?" And we had to say no for a long time. It's an interesting thing - We've been in the buy / sell / trade business for a long time, maybe 15-20 years, and on the one hand, you can say we're a gaming company, but at the same time, we're a company that has a real strong skill set around buy / sell / trade, and in fact, we're the largest refurbisher and recycler of electronics in the world. GameStop is typically known as a video games retailer, but recently you've started snatching up and reselling Android and iOS devices. With all these changes underfoot and a new console cycle just around the corner, it seemed like a good time to catch up with GameStop CEO Paul Raines to get some perspective. The brick-and-mortar store even seemed to be flirting with building a mobile network. Over the last few years, however, the firm has been expanding outside of retail sales - dipping its fingers into digital distribution, streaming and even phones and tablets. As the largest dedicated video game retailer in the world, it's hard to imagine a games enthusiast who hasn't browsed its wares a time or two. Looking to unload your unwanted gaming gear? You're probably on your way to GameStop.
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