More giant stores planned as GAME targets ten ‘arenas’

Ten more video game arenas will pop up in GAME stores across the country, the firm has confirmed.

It follows the launch of the Multiplay Arena at the GAME Trafford Centre. These sections are designed to let players compete in tournaments utilising powerful gaming PCs, and the retailer says it is already seeing a sharp increase in PC gamers coming into this store as a result.

We will have ten,” said GAME CEO Martyn Gibbs. The biggest consideration for us at the moment is broadband, and the time that it takes to get the 100Meg pipes into the store to facilitate them. Trafford has brought a completely different customer set to our stores, which is additive to the core console population that we are used to dealing with. We are seeing a lot of PC players coming into the business. We also have people pay to play on VR and in the actual arena as well. We have signed off ten arenas and we are opening those as fast as we can.”

Gibbs added that the firm is also moving some of its shops into larger units in an effort to accommodate the arenas.

We have one store in a major shopping centre that we are just about to close and move next door into a site that is three times bigger, to allow us to do the retail experience and the gaming arena as well,” Gibbs said. But we are also looking at doing some smaller outlets. We launched a store in Aberystwyth about six months ago where we were just trying new things in a really small location, and that has worked as well. We just want to keep our options open in terms of how best we put gaming experiences in front of different local populations of gamers.”