This will leave 550 GAME and GameStation outlets operating. They’ll wait for ”lease expiries, breaks” before closing them. It’ll help save millions.
”We continue actively to review our UK store base, with a view to minimising store overlap and maximising opportunities from lease expiries, breaks and rent reviews,” said chairman Peter Lewis, reports MCV.
”Operationally we have continued to derive benefits from the integration of GAME and Gamestation. We have also rationalised our store and head office cost base which, in conjunction with the store closures, will result in savings of a further £5m in each of the next two years.” In February 18 stores and 25 Debenhams concessions were axed.
New interim CEO Chris Bell also announced how they plan to update their existing outlets with improvements for customers.
”Our stores are a place to experience games, and the format is evolving to cater for their changing needs and the incoming new technology,” said Bell.
“We are trialling interactive kiosks and improved ecommerce connectivity in selected stores to expand further the range with thousands more product lines and enhanced the customer experience.”
”To deal with the transactional volumes through our stores, we continually upgrade our IT infrastructure. As part of this we are installing both customer conversion technology and top-up card activation capabilities within our outlets,” he continued.
It was, and still is, quite common to see GAME stores in close proximity to one another in the high street or even major shopping centres. GAME took over a lot of EG Games stores when they closed up and maintains old GameStation outlets too.
