“Blaine? His name is Blaine?! That’s not a name–that’s a major appliance!”
As many of you already know, Game Crazy recently announced it was closing 200 of its retail stores. I had an opportunity to stop into the Golden Valley store and interview the manager, Ryan McMillan (also a lead guitarist for the local band ‘The Alarmists’). According to Ryan, they are calling the move “Going Dark.” He has been told that there will be some stores reopening as stand-alone shops in within the next year.
I was kind of surprised that they slashed 200 of their retail stores nation wide as I understood that Game Crazy was the more profitable side of the Hollywood Video chain. Hollywood Video has been ailing for sometime and tossing around the idea of closing some of their Movie Gallery and Game Crazy stores for awhile. According to Ryan, the Golden Valley store has always been profitable–but apparently not profitable enough.
The largest store in Blaine and a smaller but highly profitable store in Cottage Grove will remain open. All other Game Crazy stores in MN will be closed for good* in 3 weeks. All new inventory was shipped back to corporate but all used inventory is now 50% of the regular sticker price with prices expected to drop drastically from week to week.
*Pending the opening of new stand-alone stores in 2010.
(if you can't use cheesy pshop effects on GCycle, where can you?)
I went to the one by my house a week after this was first announced; it was already picked clean, like so many chicken wings. Their prices were always a little higher than their competition, but the selection was slightly better.
In addition to their better selection than most new/used brick and mortar shops, I always found their prices to be better than Game Stop. They were certainly on par with all of their new pricing as that is practically set in stone. So this leaves most of us with Play N Trade and Game Stop for the new stuff. Games N Go I think only deals in used games… am I right?
We should revise the list of local shopping venues on this site, ie add relevant stores, subtract closed ones & offer general opinions(good, so-so, avoid due to high prices).
Games N Go I think only deals in used games… am I right? —> Very right. And their prices are obscene in most cases. I just refuse to shop there.
If there’s a new game coming out, I usually go the online route.
All I know is that some place in the mall was wanting $50 for a used Flashback 2 system.
On New Games-> I did pre-order Super Mario Bros. Wii at the PnT in Bloomington.
Add A Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.