Below….
16:33 EDT – Apple’s ($AAPL) new iPad announcements are likely to spur additional growth of the tablet market, and Electronic Arts ($EA) is excited. The game maker has 300 games that will be able to run on the iPad Mini when it launches on Nov. 2, and said it will already begin investigating new games designed specifically for the device. “We know how to make games for devices not meant for gaming,” said Bernard Kim, an SVP for mobile and social games at EA. “A lighter and more affordable tablet will be really exciting to us to expand the install base.”
This trend no shows no sign of slowing down and only seems to be accelerating. It is steadily taking away from the core business of $GME, the “buy and trade” which is still ~50% of profits. The makers love this as the costs for pure digital game is a fraction of the DVD game and they sell direct to the console/tablet makers and cut out $GME as the middle man.
This is the future of gaming and unless $GME buys a game maker of figures out how to do it themselves, they will continue to see their business erode. Not over night but the pace of the erosion is sure to pick up as digital game growth continues to explode. What will be left will be a spattering of stores left for legacy games (think Radioshack in electronics) that will still sell to those shrinking numbers of people who still need DVD games (people do still rent DVD movies) and they will increasingly become a second hand reseller/repairer of used ipods/ipads.
That is NOT a $2.8B buisness…..not even close