Indies profit from GAME shortages

Small UK games retailers are thriving after customers flocked to them to buy Mass Effect 3.

Indie retailers have seen sales spike as GAME fails to stock top new releases such as Street Fighter X Tekken, Mario Party 9 and the aforementioned Mass Effect.

We’ve just had our best weekend of game sales for many years,” Barkman Computers’ owner Nick Elliott told MCV. Even if GameStop pop up next week, rebrand the stores and make everything OK, we have a new army of local customers who remember we exist.”

The Game Guide’s editor Chris Ratcliff, who provides over 250 stores with an EPOS till system, added: The indies I’ve spoken to in the last few days have reported a mini-boom by concentrating on the premium games unavailable from GAME last Friday.

In the past two months we have seen an increase in people enquiring about and taking on our systems, which shows there is a renewed confidence in the indie sector.”

Independent retailers have also been able to source Collector’s Editions that GAME would normally sell exclusively.

We managed to pick up 200 Mass Effect 3 Collector’s Editions, so we had a busy midnight launch with lots of happy customers,” said Chris Muckell from Xpress Games. In the short term we’ll have an increase in sales.”

Steve Smith from Dailys added: Stocking up now will pay off later and fill the customers with confidence that there is life after GAME.”