MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
MCV has teamed up with distributor Koch Media to kick off Independent Retail Month, starting with a list of 20 of the most successful UK indie games retailers.
It may be tougher than ever being an independent retailer but there are still plenty thriving, from bricks and mortar chains to online specialists.
These include long-running High Street store Barkman Computers, web-based business Xbite and chains like Games Centre. The latter will soon open a seventh store and won the Independent Retailer MCV Award last month.
Indies say they’ve prospered by expanding online and diversifying into other product ranges.We need to keep games as they’re our core product, but we need to complement that with other products that will offset the decrease we’ll probably experience through the evolution of digital,” said Games Centre MD Robert Lindsay told MCV.
Simply Games’ MD Neil Muspratt added: Competition seems to rise every year and making a margin gets more and more challenging, so innovation isthe key.”
As it’s Indie Retail Month in MCV, we’ll be running four features in the magazine over the coming weeks where we look more closely at the top indie games retailers.
Top shops: The 20 best indies
– Barkman Computers
– Console Connections
– Coolspot
– DVD.co.uk
– Eclipse Home Entertainment
– Extreme Gamez
– Game On
– Games Centre
– Gameseek
– Grooves
– Hitari
– Insane Games
– N1 Games
– Scan Computers
– Seedee Jons
– Sega Supplies
– Simply Games
– Stan’s Games Exchange
– The Games Exchange
– Xbite
Pictured below is several of the winning indies and Koch Media execs at a lunch that took place before the MCV Awards last month.
Attendees included (from left to right): Bradley Goodman and Paul Nicholls from Koch Media, Game On’s Matthew Brady, Koch Media’s Greg Whalley, Xbite’s Nick Whitehead, Barkman Computers’ Nick Elliott and Games Centre’s Robert Lindsay.
