According to Stockwell, the company had numerous third parties approach it after reports that it was considering closing, but no proposals or solutions were presented to keep the New Zealand business sustainable.<\/p>\n
The news of a half-price closing-down sale attracted many bargain hunters to downtown Whang\u0101rei, where the queue to enter EB Games travelled from the front door to Rathbone St around the corner. <\/p>\n
Some people had been waiting in the queue for up to an hour. Photo \/ Karina Cooper<\/p>\n
The store opened at 1pm, by which time some people had already been queuing for nearly an hour. <\/p>\n
The Advocate understands people were being let inside in small groups. <\/p>\n
A 16-year-old, who did not want to be named, was disappointed that EB Games was closing in New Zealand. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think it sucks, to be honest.\u201d <\/p>\n
He said there was nowhere else in Whang\u0101rei to buy in-store the type of products sold by EB Games. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think the other biggest franchise for, like, video games is JB Hi-Fi.\u201d<\/p>\n
Northland\u2019s nearest JB Hi-Fi store is 119km away in Albany, Auckland. <\/p>\n
\u201cI guess now people are going to have to go to Auckland for that type of thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bron Longworth, 17, was waiting in line. He called the length of the queue \u201cinsane\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think Whang\u0101rei has seen anything like this for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n
He believed the availability of games online may have played a role in EB Games\u2019 demise.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that\u2019s probably part of the reason why they\u2019re going out of business, because people are downloading games now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stockwell said it was hoped that, by the end of March, New Zealand EB Games customers would be able to shop online at ebgames.com.au. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cTwenty-five years is a lifetime, a lifetime of memories and touching so many lives, I\u2019m sure in ways…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234110,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[665,806,1972,138,36444,6097,132389,125679,6489,20829,5812,27612,3025,111,139,69,14727,29547,1133,16739,57343,2735,653,1869,57767],"class_list":["post-234109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-around","tag-as","tag-block","tag-business","tag-closingdown","tag-down","tag-eb","tag-formed","tag-games","tag-locals","tag-make","tag-mass","tag-most","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-outside","tag-queue","tag-sale","tag-shoppers","tag-shuts","tag-store","tag-stores","tag-whangrei","tag-whangreis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}