Facepalm photo of the day: We might have found one of the reasons HMV's games business is failing

I spend A LOT of money at HMV, but I honestly have never bought a game from there because there are better prices at the Gamestop not even a minute away in the mall. Hell, I don't even get music there. I get a few movies maybe, BUT what really makes me drop $600+ there is their anime selection. Believe it or not, but the anime/gaming/cards/hobby speciality store in my city (Gamezilla) barely has any selection of anime to get, but every time I go to HMV they have another anime box set or movie that I want. Just for that reason I love the store to death.

One time I was browsing an EB games in Manitoba, and found Gameboy Advances (NEW) with some bonus thing (some kind of card reader I think) for 19.99. I bought two. I think the prices for used ones in the store at the time was still 30-50 bucks, without the bonus stuff.

Never seen anything quite this ridiculous, but this past Black Friday I did happen upon Gamestop selling new copies of Black Ops, with the First Strick DLC included, for cheaper than buying the game used without any extra stuff. Took me a damn year, but I finally convinced myself to pick up the game when I saw that.

There aren't any HMV's around where I live, but I rarely buy video games offline partially because of the prices... (the other reason is that they usually don't have what I want :/)

i remember reading thru the SWTOR forums about some pricing errors. the gist of it: the recently released SWTOR is priced at (in USD) $59.99, $79.99 and $149.99 for the Standard, Deluxe and CE respectively. but in some regions, the exchange rate wasn't calculated correctly. i can't recall which currency it was at specifically, but i do remember that it was listed as ?59.99, ?79.99 and ?149.99. if foreign exchange rates were followed, the different editions would have cost just CENTS in USD. i remember someone in the forums mentioning that 5 Collectors Eds of the game would cost just a little under 5USD.

HMV pretty much looks like an overseas FYE. Places like this need to get their sh*t straight or just not bother.

They do sound like FYE. Hell, the FYE stores around here have stopped selling games outright. While I've never seen anything quite so ludicrous as that, I have gotten two games cheaper due to Gamestop having the wrong sticker on them. That's about the extent of it though.

As an ex HMV employee I'd like to say that this sort of thing does happen occasionally for a number of reasons, I found a common one was stock being moved around the store by a customer, deposited somewhere random, and then returned to the shelf days or weeks later by a member of staff in a different department unfamiliar with the price (or a member of staff had disbanded their monthly secret stash). Either way, the only thing holding HMV up at the moment is the fact that many of the people who work there are actually in it for the love and would love nothing more than for people to ask them their opinion and recommendation so they take a minute out from stocking the shelves with £3 copies of Stewart Little 3 and sell that lone copy of that film you heard of once and dismissed yet is actually the film you will love most in the whole wide world. It used to be many, mow likely only some. Unfortunately, in a roundabout way, the internet offers that same service, so HMV's demise seems inevitable to me.

A week ago, I wanted to finally get around to buying Shogun 2: Total War. I remember seeing it for $29.99 on Steam, but whenever I get the option, I always prefer a physical copy. So, I go to Best Buy. I cry on the inside a little bit to see an even smaller PC game display than the last time I went into the store, and then I find Shogun 2. Being sold for $49.99. Ten or however many months it's been out, and Best Buy (at least the this one store) had yet to cut the price down.

Fantastic Mr. Fox is an amazing movie, I would be pretty disappointed in them not having it.

Might I suggest instead this is more likely a combination of shoddy housekeeping, an onus on getting stock on the shelves and not enough hours in the freaking day for the one or two employees responsible for the games section in THAT store rather than some sweeping global epidemic. Personally, if that was my games section I would be asking serious questions about price checking before stock goes out, but while, sure, you can all take the piss out of this situation because you have never really had to cope with retail at Christmas and the utter demoralisation of having people who think they know better but don't commenting on your goddamn job all the time rather than just a) minding their own business or b) thinking that the guys who work there are gamers just like you. As for Fantastic Mr, Fox, where were you six months ago if you wanted it that badly? It's not like this is a recent release and is more likely something the store has one copy of and has to reorder when sold (welcome to the sweet reality of stock ordering people. Strangely enough, we have to sell stuff before we can order it again, and even weirder, sometimes suppliers take a small amount of time to send one out to us. Inconceivable, I know...) also, did you even think to ask one of the staff members for help? You all take great joy in deriding bricks and mortar stores, though, we probably know a great deal more about games and gaming than a lot of the people who think the only people who would buy games in a shop are grannies and mums, we aren't some evil corporation intent on nicking your cash, we ae caring, sharing people struggling to survive in a badly declining industry and we genuinely want to try and help you.... Something you won't get on the net. It's saddening that those people who enjoy kicking us when we are down the most are those that will be first to complain when they have to wait for their mail order new release to turn up and it is one day late (where you could have walked into a high street store and bought it on the morning, and sometimes the midnight before, of release day. Most of the people who work at HMV do it for the love, not for the paycheck. We are not GameStop, we are one of the oldest, and most reliable British stores in existence. Lose us, and pretty much the only thing for you guys to do in a town centre is go to pubs, restaurants and Starbucks! I know I don't speak the official company line, but these days, it seems to be getting more and more personal and we, the employees of HMV are getting bloody sick of it! It isn't our fault the recession happened, we have done bloody well to outlast Zavvi, virgin, and Woolworths, and we look at how GAME is performing to see how the industry as a who's is going. What you all fail to realise is losing the high street will not benefit you in the other retail sectors. Downloads are often more pricey, Internet will quickly put their prices up if they no longer have to offer an incentive over the high street and if you find a SPECIALIST RETAILER an unsavoury environment to shop in, then how soulless will you find a supermarket? Deride the top end business decisions made by head office if you must, but don't, please, please don't, give the guys working the shop floor any more gip than we are already getting every damn day already. We have to deal with assholes all day on the shop floor, the last thing we want is to have to read about it on the Internet when we get home, on the very sites we use to get the information we need to be able to tell you exactly what you guys want to know. Lose HMV, lose what little passion for this hobby this industry has!

Wow, wall of text.

sorry, but that mountain of words is simply too intimidating now if it had some proper spacing I might feel differently

Now if I was not using an iPad to type that out I'd feel for you. But tl;dr always has, and always will be, a lame excuse. Plus, it is supposed to be intimidating.

Hey, remember that time you cried about people making fun of HMV being shitty at pricing games? Good times. Also, even if HMV closing down left people with only "pubs, restaurants and Starbucks" in a local town centre... that's still a whole lot of goddamn choice. But, you know, that's leaving out all the other stores that would be completely unaffected by HMV closing.

I think what really puts me off is the "actual" price (£30-50 depending on game and platform), its a fact its cheaper online. If games on Steam or any online downloading service I would gladly buy them from that. I hate having all these boxes and boxes of games. Instead I have to resort to amazon and play.com. Only recently just bought Batman Arkham city for £19.95!! It's still £40 on steam. Bargain.

I go to HMV for music, I don't get games there.

HMV is the shop where a parent or grandparent goes to buy their child a game for a birthday present because they would feel out of place in a proper game shop. They rely on the fact that the purchaser probably has no idea which games are any good and how much they are worth.

I see this sort of thing in GAME stores on a regular basis, not on such a ridiculous level, but when I can pick up a brand new copy of a game for less than it would pre-owned just blows my mind. It also happens on the website. Stupidity at a new level.

Is it possible that they are pricing the used games based on what they paid for them on the trade in?