We recently ran a story about how games are becoming more realistic than ever with today’s technology, but I’m not sure this is such a good thing.
Although realism’s cool, isn’t one of the points of playing a game is you know it’s a game? Plus, having grown up in the original Atari and Nintendo days, I enjoy the old school graphics that weren’t that advanced, and the silly little game songs that sound so funny today.
Going back and playing the classics is a lot of fun, and now there’s a report on Forbes that GameStop stores are going to be selling old school games.
As Forbes points out, things are moving towards digital distribution, but GameStop stores are doing very well, and now they’re also moving towards selling older games.
The CEO of GameStop, Paul Raines, said, “We’ve got them. We think there’s a vintage sales opportunity, so we’re accumulating some inventory.” Going online and on Ebay, it’s clear there’s a demand for old games, and as Raines continued, “We’ve got to be in that business. We will be.”
I’ve often wondered how much modern gamers go back to the old days of games for historical perspective, for nostalgia, or like with any games, just good old fun. As Forbes notes, it’s not clear how big the market is for old gaming, and you also wonder how many old school gamers go back to the stuff they loved when they were kids.
As writer Paul Tassi feels, it could be best to sell old games online, because having stores devoted to old games may not be viable, and there may not be enough room in the current GameStop stores to keep piling up more games. And indeed, as TheVerge tell us, GameStop is thinking of doing this online, which may make better business sense.
“Our website is becoming unbelievably rich,” Raines continued. “We can’t just be trying to go head-to-head with Amazon, beating each other to death on delivery dates. We do plenty of that. But we’ve got to be a destination for gamers where, for cool stuff for gaming, you’ve got to go to GameStop.”
It also would be a cool idea for GameStop to have the best of the modern day stuff, and old school as well, and provide gamers with the best of both worlds. Still, how much of an audience is out there for the old classics remains to be seen.
