GameStop Shares Crash Post-Holidays
The days of buying video games in stores are slowly coming to an end
GameStop shares fell over 18% on Tuesday morning after the company announced "greater than expected decline" in video game sales over the holidays. Blaming it on the gaming transition to next generation consoles Xbox One from Microsoft and PlayStation 4 from Sony, GameStop reported a 22.5% sales decline in the new software category.
Investors saw the news as a warning sign for GameStop, which otherwise reported sales increases for the period. Total global sales came in at $3.15 billion, a 9.3% increase from 2012. Comparable store sales increased a healthy 10.2%, driven by a nearly 100% increase in new hardware sales — all those PS4s and Xbox Ones under the Christmas trees.