Blue Shell Gaming in Fresno<\/a>, said independent stores are often better poised to adapt to shifting consumer behavior than large national chains. Gonzalez and his wife both had experience in the industry prior to opening Blue Shell Gaming in 2014, including his wife\u2019s former work with GameStop.<\/p>\nGonzalez added that the gaming industry has evolved significantly over the past decade, shifting away from the traditional model of purchasing a disc and playing a game directly from a console.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe industry has changed from just actually buying a disk and putting in a system and playing \u2014 it has gotten more digital,\u201d he said. \u201cBut people do want collectibles \u2014 something that\u2019s attached to that digital game.\u201d<\/p>\n
The ownership question<\/p>\n
Gonzalez said that many customers still seek out physical copies of games as a way to signify ownership in an era dominated by digital downloads. He added that digital purchases can be unstable as licensing agreements expire or platforms shut down.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople have downloaded games, movies and digital content \u2014 and then it gets taken from them,\u201d Gonzalez said. \u201cWhen the digital store shuts down or it\u2019s no longer licensed to a particular company, they lose that data or they can\u2019t play it anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added that many customers did not realize they do not technically own their purchases, but instead own permission to access licensed content.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are still some people that are purists and want that physical copy because it really can\u2019t be taken away,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Agility vs. scale<\/p>\n
Gonzalez said smaller retailers are also able to pivot more quickly than large chains when industry trends change. GameStop, founded as Babbage\u2019s in 1984, originally focused on selling video games, consoles and accessories, only later expanding into collectibles as a revenue driver in the 2000s and more aggressively in the late 2010s.<\/p>\n
Gonzalez said that the growing pains felt by GameStop make sense; training a national workforce is considerably more challenging than handling individual employees on a single-store level.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s harder to turn that big ship,\u201d Gonzalez said of GameStop\u2019s shift toward collectibles. \u201cFor them to train thousands of people across their stores, it\u2019s tougher. For us, with our smaller market, we can go teach our employees firsthand on how to value collectibles, what to look for in reproduction so that we know we\u2019re buying the real thing, and we\u2019re able to change our price points rather quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added that flexibility also allows the business to extend negotiations to customers and distributors, particularly when it comes to customer trade-ins \u2014 something that can feel rigid and unfair at many large national retailers.<\/p>\n
Gonzalez said Blue Shell Gaming plans to continue to focus on what it\u2019s always done: prioritize physical media and offer the option of retro gaming \u2014 something many large scale retailers don\u2019t offer \u2014 as newer consoles increase in price.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of our retro systems are still very fun to play and still very age appropriate, and our prices really haven\u2019t changed much,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
GameStop has already closed several Valley locations over the past years, including stores at the Sierra Vista Mall and Universal Park shopping center in 2015, as well as a store at Marketplace at El Paseo that only operated for a handful of years before permanently closing.<\/p>\n
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