PC Game Retail: How Is It In Your Area?

So basically, how is the PC game retail scene in your area? Here in South Florida, where I like the situation is dismal. Gamestop (EBGames) now only stock a very small ammount of PC games, usually just one of each. Unless it's near the release date for a popular game, you can forget about finding older titles even from the same year.

All the brick and mortar stores are in the same situation, stocking very few PC games overall and only of the most popular sold leading to poor selection.

I have been buying most of my games through STEAM or on-line retailers now but I would love to just be able to go out and come back home with a game in hand.

How's the PC retail scene in your area? It's pretty much dead in mine.

 

I've been buying my games online because they have better discounts/coupons... and no tax. I bought SC2 the week after launch for 36 bucks lol.
I went to best buy and gamestop last week and most of the games are for console. The only PC games on the shelves were Activision games and couple EA's

 

Over here in the UK it's pretty much the same. I never understood why they stock the games they do (for example, they never have orange box aka the-best-thing-in-existance, but they do stock bus simulator... bus simulator...?

I honestly don't understand why they stock terrible games quite readily but lack the all time classics which are actually worth getting. When I ask if they can order them in, half of the time they haven't even heard of it.

 

There's quite a few games stores that sell PC games over here (in the UK). But console games still dominate the majority of shelf space. Many of the non-dedicated games stores won't sell PC games at all (only the console games).

Best place to buy retail PC games these days is online for example Amazon or Play.co.uk.

 

Game retailers in nz all sell console games as well so stores are very alive. Suprisingly they stock a lot of games so availibility is never an issue. Games here retail for extremely high prices ($100nz which is $80US).

 

I think it's because no one will ever look up the crappy games online, but in a store, some little kid might see the game and convince his dad to get it because he thinks bus drivers are cool. Games like Mass Effect 2 or Bad Company 2 on the other hand, the stores know that experienced PC gamers who buy those games usually download them online from steam or some other source, so there's not many PC gamers willing to go to the store to get it. That's what I'm guessing at least.

 

Pretty bad but I don't mind since I know that Steam will always be there for me

 

The selection is pretty great out here in SoCal. Best Buy's very good about stocking popular titles like Modern Warfare, Warcraft, Sims and etc. For more older, obscure and generally harder to find titles, there's Fry's.

 

I stopped trying to buy PC games in stores long ago after I realized that all that was there was either incredibly old or bad. For boxed PC games I just buy them off amazon, it's normally chepar there too.

 

Most of the stores here in Texas have slowly but surly gotten rid of PC Games either entirely or carry a very limited amount. The one exception is Best Buy. The aisle of PC Software is about half of the aisle for either Xbox or PS3. They seem to carry a pretty decent selection of PC Games.

 

Best Buy does still have a somewhat decent selection of PC games, that is true. As far as other stores go in my area, they pretty much nothing.

I personally have a rather slow net connection so I prefer boxed copies and I like the instant gratification of buying a game at a store rather than waiting for UPS to deliver it.

 

I do agree that Best Buy is the best out of all the other local stores in my area but still, it only has those blockbuster titles, Call of Duty, etc.

 

apart from certain stores in the uk there arnt many pc games on the shelves just the top 10 in the charts and a couple left over gimmiky games.
The Big HMV in the west end,london and some othere hmv's
normaly have a good size aile of pc games

 

If it weren't for Blizzard games: World of Warcraft, and Star Craft 2, I'm pretty sure all the Walmarts in Arizona would just completely remove their PC gaming sections.

 

As far as new, current-release PC games, the story here in IL is the same as everywhere else. Most Gamestop stores stopped carrying them, Best Buy still has a somewhat decent selection, and so does Fry's, at least at the lone Fry's in the state. As has been mentioned, most savvy PC gamers are turning to Steam, Direct2Drive, and assorted other online distribution methods.

If you're looking for not-so-A-list games, a surprising place to get them is Half-Price Books. That store is quite the clearing house for new and even used titles. You could buy games such as Cryostasis and Necrovision for $8 or less, brand new. They even had sealed copies of Jedi Knight and Jedi Knight II. I've picked up several older titles from them at bargain prices. They even e-mail coupons from time to time where you can save 20-50% off a single item.

 

I moved to digital distribution awhile ago, where I was a few months ago in Ontario was bad, but they were really pushing their digital distribution for EB Games, also two EB Games had closed there. Future Shop, Best Buy and Wal-Mart where all good, and at times Best Buy would have games before EB Games (New releases).

Here in Manitoba, the PC games are on par with the console games, usually with their own shelf and the same size as a single consoles shelf space. New releases are locked (crime is a problem here). Anyway, I found it amusing, but the age of brick and mortar stores for video games is coming to a close. I no longer have use for disks, packaging and CD keys.

 

Here in central FL..Gamestop(EBgames) and Electronics Boutique don't have many pc games stocked..(usually 1 small shelf of games)...heck..Walmart has more of a selection than them anymore..
..The best one is Best Buy..they still have a decent set of titles stocked.
Anymore..of course..the best way to go is digital distribution (like steam) or online...

 

Strange. The situation for retailers here in Australia is actually quite decent, at least where I live anyway. Although that's probably because a) the internet here is only in a real "development" stage, and b) as a result of that, people are only just catching on to services like Steam and D2D.

As a matter of fact, EB Games (actually EB Games over here, not Gamestop), has opened a new store in one of the semi rural towns here, and they have a fair range in stock. I found Metro 2033 for about $30 (incredibly cheap for Australia), which was lower than Steam's regional price at that point. The same case with BF:BC2. I think they even had KOTOR, and a few other older game, like Deus Ex, etc.

JB Hi-Fi and Harvey Norman also have a decent selection of PC games, but the going trend in ALL stores is that we are pretty much dominated by console games. Sometimes I've actually considered buying more games for my Xbox 360, seeing as we get shafted most of the time, but there seems to be something holding me back. I'd probably be absolutely horrid at playing FPS games with a gamepad though.

However, I've moved on to Steam, since I believe it's a better system for managing and installing the games you have. Plus, the sales tend to burn a hole in my wallet, but I love them anyway.

 

I'm part of the reason why retailers don't even bother stocking pc games; haven't even set foot in an EB since 06, thanks to steam. Bestbuys in canada still have a small section for pc games, though they are 75% EA/activision and 20% children's/educational/card games.

 

My local Target (equivalent to shopko, kmart, walmart if you don't know) carries The Orange Box, blizzard battlechests, SC2, popular Activision titles, some ea's some lucas arts... decent selection if you ask me, just easier to use steam.

 

Last time I stepped foot in a Gamestop 3 years ago, they only had maybe one side of a 2.5' rack with PC games.

CompUSA had 1 long rack on both sides with PC games and Circuit City had a wall before they went under. Walmart and Best Buy now maybe have one side of a rack, with the former usually being sparse with options asides from triple A titles depending on location. Never bothered to look in K mart or Target.

Nowadays I buy from Amazon if I don't go digital.

 

Yeah, I also find Target is well stocked. Actually have some pretty good sales periodically too. I'll pick up an older game now and again if it's on a good sale. Best Buy is about the only other place with a half-way decent stock of PC games.

Otherwise, Gamespot is crap. Even crap for consoles. Not sure why you'd shop there any more for anything to be honest. Best Buy, Target, Walmart, Kmart, Toys R Us, etc all have a huge selection and frequently have price wars too.

Although, can't recall buying any game retail in 2010, except for a couple classic titles from Target.

 

Here in Alberta Future Shop and Best Buy have a decent selection of PC games. However the EB Games (Gamestop these days I guess) have very little PC games for sale. The last batch of sales on Steam have finally convinced me to go digital for my games.

 

PC Games are pretty much non existent in Paris .. only place i managed to come across was at VirginMegastore .. and they were way overpriced! 50 euros for Darksiders if i remember correctly.

 

Sucks in SoCal. Target has a little section far in the where the magazines are and the selection of PC games is quite poor. 80% of them are crappy random games that have been out for the past 10 years from no name companies. And no one is ever in the PC game section lol.

 

Here in KS they have a little row of them on wal-marts and GS gets also a few of them. Personally I'm not getting boxed PC games anymore now that I'm into Steam... the last one I got was Starcratf 2 for the collector's edition (which was awesome btw).

 

Texas is indeed the abysmal wasteland of nothing. Best Buy does carry a few, but mostly only the major titles, kid's games, and the Sims. Gamestop is degenerating into nothing, EB Games are all gone (bought out by Gamestop), Fry's is a bit far from me these days (but indeed the only brick and mortar store I've seen lately that has a good selection of PC games, much less a diverse one going across many years of games), and Wal-Mart and Co are a joke for selection (as they are everywhere else).

I miss the days of Funcoland.

Part of the problem with the PC game market is the fact that most PC games these days are just poor ports of console games. Stores look at the numbers, see that they can choose to stock the same game for 6 different systems (if you count the handhelds and crud), notice that the lowest sales numbers is for the PC, and cut the PC off the list. Gamestop doesn't carry many PC games because they can't molest you by buying back a $70 game for $1 then sell it back to someone else for $50 again for the most part like they can a console game. Average Joe won't be buying/putting together a computer that can play all the A-List titles every year, he'll just get a PS3/360/Wii that hopefully the market will stick with for the better part of a decade for $200-500 and be done with it, not having to worry about compatibility with video cards, etc etc. Stores will cater to Average Joe because Average Joe represents a much larger % of the population than Mr. 'Gamer'. Therefore the store will carry childrens' games, EA Sports, WoW, The Sims, and that AAA title of the week. Average Joe will buy it, play it for a few weeks or more, then go sell it somewhere or it sits on his shelf. Rinse and repeat.

I'm sure there's a lot more involved, but that is all I can think of atm.

 

Still going strong here In australia, Jb-hifi has a huge selection of new titles and some older ones aswell. Plus its not as expensive as Ebgames, but they have the orange box.

I don't think its going to die that soon in Australia, it will eventually but I'm one of the rare few who like buying CD-ROM from stores.

 

I like getting the discs from the store as well, especially if it's a particularly nice box set. The problem is, for most games that is simply not an option around here. It's unfortunate, but it is the way it is for now. I don't buy console games anymore, even though I have a 360 sitting by my TV. Most of the time, it just gathers dust. Since stores don't want to carry PC games beyond Starcraft, Diablo, BF:BC2 etc (all of which I own already, cept the Sims and all the other junky kiddy games I don't want), they simply don't get my business.

Steam is cheaper for the most part anyways. The holiday deals definitely beefed my library of games up quite a bit. Unfortunately, if anything happens to Steam and I don't have all the games downloaded, I have no idea what I'll do (if there's little warning, of course). I'll always prefer a disc bought from the store, but when it's not an option, it's not an option.

 

I'm suffering here in tunisia..there is NO original copies of software you can't have a clean games playable online.. WAREZ are the only way to get games and this is a waste of money for developers !

 

lol you can always try ebay.. no excuse you know.. Here in UK , you have GAME store even in the small city i live in.. but amazon is way cheaper for me so i don't buy from there.. no wonder these stores are dying.

Panther214

 

My wallet is gonna take a hit in March with all the games coming out like Crysis 2, NFS Shift 2 and Homefront.

 

Yeah I remember when Gamestop had a bunch of PC games lined up for people to check out...

 

PC games are pretty dry in my area with the exception of Target, Best Buy and Walmart. Best Buy has the best selection followed by Target.