“The GameStops in DC are really … crappy. They’re in a really bad part of town. There’s, like, bars on the windows and shit.” — HarrasmentPanda, DC/Bmore NARP, May 2, 2009
Evidently the rest of the country doesn’t share Panda’s fear of GameStop as they have control of 21 percent of the gaming market in the U.S. Gamasutra came up with the numbers in an expose on the company they are conducting and say that the other 79 percent are sold mostly by chain stores like Best Buy and Walmart. The number isn’t quite official either as those chain stores don’t group accessories and PC games in their gaming sales while GameStop does.
Still even with the slight mathematical guessing game that Gamasutra had to do the number is interesting. For me it seems a little low since I’ve always seen GameStop as an evil corporation controlling most of the world. Plus, the way devs talk about you’d think they had a 99 percent share of the market or something. Then again 1/5 is a pretty big slice of any pie. MMMMM, pie.
