GameStop boss: Game disks are completely irrelevant

GameStop does not see itself under pressure from the foreseeable end of physical PlayStation games. CEO Ryan Cohen explained in an interview with Bloomberg the development is “completely irrelevant” for the future of the company.

Other things bring in sales

The background to the statements is Sony’s announcement that it will no longer produce new PlayStation games on physical data carriers from 2028. Cohen made it clear that GameStop has fundamentally changed its business strategy in recent years. While the retailer used to make a living primarily from selling new and used video games, today other product groups play a much larger role. Collectibles, trading cards, toys and merchandise such as Funko figures have now become significantly more important. According to the company, at the beginning of the year only 18 percent of sales came from games purchased on physical media. In contrast, trading cards and toys already contributed 41 percent to the business.

Against this background, Cohen does not attach great importance to the industry’s gradual move away from physical storage media. From his perspective, GameStop is now much more broadly positioned and therefore less dependent on classic game sales than it was a few years ago.

Always eBay

Grand Theft Auto 6 also came up in the conversation, which is currently scheduled to appear exclusively digitally in November. If the game were actually released without a classic disc version, GameStop would not be able to buy and resell used copies. This business model was an important source of income for the company for many years. However, Cohen hardly addressed the question about the impact of the expected blockbuster. Instead, he redirected the conversation to his plans for the online marketplace eBay. The GameStop boss tried to take over the company this year for around $55 billion, which is far more than GameStop itself is worth.

However, eBay rejected the unsolicited offer in May. Nevertheless, Cohen continues to stick to his idea. He estimates that a merger between GameStop and eBay could create a company with a potential value of $1 trillion. He had already publicly confirmed in June that he had not given up on the project despite the rejection. However, it is currently unclear whether these considerations will actually result in a new attempt.