GAME buy-out?

Two obvious candidates, however, are US giants Electronics Boutique and GameStop, both of which have made clear their intentions to expand rapidly in the European market in the coming years.[/quote:a56ae2239f]
Funny that. Living in Belfast I’ve grown up with a very different perspective.

Electronics Boutique were the store that sold mostly second hand games and packed up their bags after Game forced them out of business.

Gamestop are relatively newcomers who have set up shop right next to EB’s old store in the dirty alleys of Whatsitcalled Street. No one really seems to care.

The Belfast branch of Game are the powerful tyrants that are the largest selling games store in Europe.

Will be interesting to see how the move affects things on a local level.

I thought EB was game, or at least they must have sold out to them in Ireland, because Game on Henry, and EB on dawson were the exact same. I could be wrong, and when EB closed its doors on it opened 9am next morning as game. Infact I even remember getting my old EB loyalty card replaced for a game one automatically.

Heres what happened, while getting ready for work one morning, in Game, I was reading on Teletext that Electonics Boutique (UK) had bought out Game Store Ltd. I went off to work that and asked the manager and he said he hadn’t heard anything.

Few weeks later, he told me that EB (UK), had only franchised the rights to the EB name from the US company. Those rights were expiring so instead of renewing, they bought out the competition and changed all their stores to Game, and subsequently lots of badness (in my experience) that allowed customers walk all over staff and staff walk all over customers, where as it used to be nice and friendly when it was possible, but ohwell ce la vie (I’m not bitter honest….). Terrible when a great job goes sour.

At the time I’m guessing EB were way bigger than Game in UK but not Ireland. It was funny to have the managers of the former EBs with us since we’d always whooped them at sales (later found out why….), also was funny to find out company information via teletext before company memo went out.

It would be hilarious for EB (US) to buy out Game now and see stores like henry street be modelled back in EBs again.