GameStop to close up to 200 stores by 2020
The bad news just keeps coming for the biggest video game retailer GameStop.
The company said Tuesday that it would be closing up to 200 stores by the beginning of 2020. Chief Financial Officer Jim Bell dropped that information in an earnings call, saying that despite GameStop already closing 195 stores, the company was “on track to close between 180 and 200 underperforming stores globally by the end of this fiscal year.”
The news comes after recent moves by GameStop which already indicated just how much the company is struggling lately. Sales were down 13.3 percent in the first quarter of this year, and in August, GameStop laid off up to 200 employees in multiple divisions, according to Business Insider, which included parting ways with about 14 percent of its corporate associates at its Texas headquarters and almost half the staff at the company's popular video game magazine, Game Informer.
GameStop is trying to keep pace in an evolving and changing video game industry. A major headwind facing the retailer is that gamers no longer necessarily need or want to buy their video games at a brick-and-mortar store. Instead, they can download the games directly to the gaming console, without having to leave their home.