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GameStop Plans To Launch an NFT Marketplace (bloomberg.com) 47

Posted by msmash from the up-next dept.
GameStop plans to launch a marketplace for nonfungible tokens for gamers by the end of the year, Bloomberg News reported Friday, citing a person familiar with the matter. From the report: The company, which is in the midst of a turnaround to focus on digital sales rather than brick-and-mortar shops, is also in talks with crypto and blockchain companies about which tokens could be used on the NFT marketplace, the person said, asking not to be named discussing details that aren't yet public. It's also discussing with partners the potential for creating a number of funds, of up to $100 million each, to invest in NFT content creators and gaming companies. Over the last few months, GameStop has assembled a team of more than 20 people that are focused on the crypto-related push, the person said.
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GameStop Plans To Launch an NFT Marketplace

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  • Last breaths from a dead and irrelevant company,

    • There are 400 independently owned rat shacks still in operation and the company was bought by Ecommerce Ventures which plans to use it for online sales. So it's still limping on pretty well, although it bears little resemblance to the radio shack we knew and loved until the late 80s or so (and grudgingly visited even after that to see if they had anything useful in the store... usually not.)

      Gamestop got bailed out by the fad investors and are still trying to find ways to survive, but those ways don't involv

      • Re:Radio Shack is doing this too (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Valgrus Thunderaxe ( 8769977 ) on Friday January 07, 2022 @09:37AM (#62151863)
        With the whole "maker movement" it's mind-boggling to me that RadioShack totally missed this mark They could have been selling stuff like 3D printers and Arduinos and whatnot.

        Not really. I worked for a Tandy company when it was under the control of John Roach. He's about as enlightened in terms of tech as John Dvorak was (who is also doing crypto now).

        That apocryphal Bill Gates quote about 640K of memory was actually a quote from John Roach regarding the TRS-80 Model I. It was something along the lines of "2K of memory should be enough for anybody (in terms of that particular machine). I wish I could find an actual source for that but it seems lost to history.

        • A couple of people say they were there when Gates made his remark. He may have been referring back to Roach, though.

          • I'm certain that Roach was the source of this, although I don't have any evidence of it. I think it was attributed to Gates because he's a much more familiar name than John Roach was.

            • I don't have any trouble believing that, I just also don't have any trouble believing that Gates paraphrased him later.

            • Anyone involved in designing computers would have needed to answer how much RAM is enough, along with anyone buying them for a company.

              How many people have said "a 4TB drive is enough"? Or "4GB of RAM is enough"? Probably several people have said that TODAY, in the last few hours. Same with RAM sizes a few decades ago.

              • Roach made that comment when Tandy released a memory expansion for the Model I - It took the base machine from 2K (or 4K?) up to something like 64K and it was very expensive at the time.

                There was some backlash at the price, and Roach's response was basically saying the average user won't need that expansion (ie. the base memory would be sufficient for the average user).

        • RadioShack had to become an cell phone store with the hard sale of the 2 year plan.

        • I think the problem is most nerds buy that stuff online. Also markets move fast, making it hard for traditional retail to keep up and not get stuck with obsolete inventory.

          • They eventually tried having arduino stuff for like a hot second but they tried it way too late so it failed. If they had the stuff in store earlier on then people would have gotten used to the idea that they could just go pick it up when they needed something.

          • In the 1970s and 1980s or so, Radio Shack did mail order with paper catalogs. Much like Sears and Montgomery Ward did a lot of sales that way.

            At some point, new management took over and shut down the mail order because it wasn't profitable to handle orders for $2 of resistors or whatever. (Remember they didn't have Amazonian robots in the warehouse).

            People are very, unreasonably, hesitant to change their minds once they announce a decision. Just look at how few people who voted for Trump or Biden are will

        • With the whole "maker movement" it's mind-boggling to me that RadioShack totally missed this mark They could have been selling stuff like 3D printers and Arduinos and whatnot.

          RadioShack died and became a cheap-arse mobile phone reseller before Arduinos and 3D printers were a thing. The problem was, even if they were still a thing no self respecting nerd goes in one because they know that some sales drone is just going to try and sell them a phone instead.

          They were outright toxic to the maker community back when they still stocked some parts makers were interested in.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

            Also, when you can order an arduino from China for $1, why would you pay somebody at Radio Shack to hand you one for $20?

            • Also, when you can order an arduino from China for $1, why would you pay somebody at Radio Shack to hand you one for $20?

              Maybe because you want something which works? Don't get me wrong Arduinos from China are great with such included features such as a true hardware random number generator, just count clock cycles until your chip randomly resets for no reason, they can help start the BBQ as the resettable fuse makes a great firestarter, and really if you ever need a new computer, just plug a devices with a Chinese made voltage "regulator" in. You get about 6-12 attempts depending on how many USB ports you have on your mother

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

                I've got a dozen or so and they all work fine. Maybe you've managed to discover some sort of scam? Or maybe you're just talking out your ass?

                • I've got a dozen or so and they all work fine. Maybe you've managed to discover some sort of scam? Or maybe you're just talking out your ass?

                  "Work fine" is great if you're blinking an LED, not so much if you actually push a device to their specs. Many of the Arduino clones have documented cases of fuses burning out. Many have documented cases of VRs breaking and damaging devices well before the specified maximum current draw. And honestly if you don't know about the amazing flood of fake Atmel microcontrollers out there and just when they do or don't work. Blinking your little LED with delay loops? Great, you can do that on any fake garbage. Wan

      • The son of a bitches bought out Funcoland and Babages and massively jacked up prices unused games once they corner in the market. But in their defense how do you listen to in service customers without a product?

        The reason they got out of retro games is that you have to hire pretty good staff who can spot fakes to sell retro games. I have several retro podcasts I listen to and every single one of them was constantly complaining about getting fake cartridges from GameStop. And yeah you can say they just n
      • I was thinking a closer analogy was BlockBuster. Between Redbox and online rentals they took a major hit. Gamestops biggest mistake was overcharging on used copies of games. There is still a market for used copies, but if only $5 separates a new sealed game versus a used one, it doesnt feel like a great savings. That limits their value to out-of-print used games.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward
          I don't know how Gamestop could do otherwise. They're mostly in malls and that rent is exceedingly expensive. That's why most malls are dominated by shoe stores and women's clothing because there's such a high mark-up on those items. Used games not so much.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DarkOx ( 621550 )

        ways don't involve actually listening to or serving customers

        I don't know this Game Stop we are talking about their customer are the sort that go in a buy a 15th example of the exact same Fuko bobble head with a slightly different character silk screened on...That sounds like EXACTLY the sort wants to drop money on an NFT without having to have even the vaguest understanding what it actually is or how any of the technology works.

        Considering this - "I like the stock"

      • Gamestop got bailed out by the fad investors and are still trying to find ways to survive, but those ways don't involve actually listening to or serving customers so they got rid of the retro games which are only gaining in popularity.

        In fairness...about anything they do now is going to end up being an act of desperation.

        Consoles are most of the way to removing physical media entirely, not the least of which is because even the patches for some games exceed the storage capacities of Blu-Ray discs. They could (and should) move to just selling read-only flash drives for games, but it's clear that the game industry as a whole isn't looking to pursue offline-playable games - those games don't provide "recurrent user spending" or revenue from

        • This is where the 'retro games' question comes into play...and I can kinda-sorta understand why Gamestop wouldn't want to pursue that. Doing retro games 100% legally is a massive mine field. Copyrights on older games are tough.

          Copyright is largely irrelevant on older games because they don't have activation keys. You buy the game, you sell the game. If it's an obvious copy then you get in trouble for selling it; if you make a good-faith effort to not buy counterfeits then you should be safe from repercussions. You don't need to worry about patents at all if you're selling used game systems, either.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Revek ( 133289 )
      You have no clue what is going on. They literally have billions in funds on hand and no debt at all. They guy who now owns it now Ryan Cohen built and sold chewy for billions. Gamestop hasn't The announced their NFT plans but there has been speculation for months. Part of what is being talked about is that they will use a blockchain to allow people to resell their purchased game and DLC purchases. The stock gained back 20% in after hours trading last night. It keeps being subjected to short ladder attac

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dmomo ( 256005 )

      They sort of are.. but they company is now owned by Tai Lopez's acquisition company. Check the guy out. He's basically a crypto infomercial / fraudster. Steer clear away.

  • never goes out of style.

  • Greytree Enterrpises Inc would like to announce that they are getting in to NFT.

    Send me money and I'll send you a JPEG from my collection and a number.

    1. Find fools.
    2. Get them to send you real money for a JPEG
    3. Profit.

  • The price went through the roof for it last year.
    • I think that is approximately right. I would say a cryptocurrency amounts to a share in a company that has already gone out of business and therefore has no assets, cannot have a profit or loss, and can no longer issue new shares.

      (Admittedly crypto is different in that it doesn't rely on a regulatory regime for enforcement.)

      So, Gamestop stock is basically a cryptocurrency. Yes there is an underlying business, but GameStop's latest twelve months p/e ratio is -64.0x and its p/e ratio for fiscal years e

  • And lo, the morons did beg to be scammed

  • "investors", which makes sense for them really. AMC was offering free popcorn and some other shit if you could prove you held shares after /r/WSB kids saved them from bankruptcy too.

  • No filter? (Score:3)

    by leptons ( 891340 ) on Friday January 07, 2022 @12:36PM (#62152337)
    Is there any way I can filter out all these Craptocoin stories? There's way too much of this nonsense on /. lately. It's getting really boring.

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