Gamestation sold

[Central]

NEW YORK, May 2 (Reuters) - Blockbuster Inc. (BBI.N: Quote, Profile , Research) said on Wednesday it had sold Game Station Ltd. to British-based Game Group Plc (GMG.L: Quote, Profile , Research) for about $150 million in cash, subject to certain adjustments.

Blockbuster said it intends to use most of the money from the sale of Game Station, its 217-store speciality games retailer in the UK, to pay down debt.

[NoKnowledge]

Wow, another company bought by GAME (or did EB change their name to GAME?)

I have about 7 GAME stores within a 5 mile radius, that I know of. Not including the new Gamestation stores.

[Stuart]

EB uk changed their name to Game.

[LostintheNW]

Great no doubt the fab trade ins we get at Gamestation will be gone! grrrr Game annoy me at times!

[Halcyon]

This is shame. You used to be get some of the best trade-in deals at Gamestation when GAME would give you hardly anything.

[icestar2]

Hmmm In my local town there was an EB and a game - then EB became game so now there's 2 games. About a year after gamestation opened. Now that game has bought them we will have 3 game store's all within a small town center. Gamestation is right across from game.

Shame really because with the 2 company being so close together we used to get good deal's with them being in competition but that will now stop and Game will be the only gaming specialist store here - Look's like our great deals will be out the window now.

[Halcyon]

In my town we have 3 Game stores that orginally were EB stores.
One of them is located in Debenhems too.

[Stephen]

EB UK actually licenced the name from EB USA and when EB UK purchased GAME the licence on the name was coming to an end so they just rebranded all the stores to Game so they didn't need to payout any more money to use the EB name.

I used to work for them a few years ago.

Use Gameplay online retailer instead, usually better deals than GAME.

[Uncle Peter]

Certainly smacks of a takeover with hostile intentions as I would imagine that wherever there's a Gamestation there can't be a branch of Game too far away. This also raises the question of what happens to the Blockbuster "in-store" branches of Gamestation.

[Gareth]

Ack, this is bad news, imo... as already said, I think this spells the end of the great trade-ins

In Swindon, there's already 3 Game stores within ½-mile radius of each other (2 of them are extremely close together). The one Gamestation store that we have has always been miles better than the 3 Game stores combined.

Not pleased about this news at all

[thepcwizard]

Originally Posted by Be*

NEW YORK, May 2 (Reuters) - Blockbuster Inc. (BBI.N: Quote, Profile , Research) said on Wednesday it had sold Game Station Ltd. to British-based Game Group Plc (GMG.L: Quote, Profile , Research) for about $150 million in cash, subject to certain adjustments.

Blockbuster said it intends to use most of the money from the sale of Game Station, its 217-store speciality games retailer in the UK, to pay down debt.

It was enevitable.

[Tezcatlipoca]

Originally Posted by NEONKNIGHT

Use Gameplay online retailer instead, usually better deals than GAME.

They are quite good. I tend to use them a lot (& Sendit.com)


But guess who owns Gameplay.co.uk

All Gamestations will keep their name their deals, and target the same customers. As far as the customer is concerned their is no difference. All the Gamestations in Blockbusters will have to close by the end of June however

[Central]

Originally Posted by Damien

All Gamestations will keep their name their deals, and target the same customers. As far as the customer is concerned their is no difference. All the Gamestations in Blockbusters will have to close by the end of June however

We have one in the Blockbusters I work at. As far as I know we are keeping the staff and the concession part as the games department just removing the Gamestation logos and replacing it with Blockbuster logos.

Should be a interesting few months indeed.