Today marks the end of UK game retailers GAME and Gamestation as the GAME group has filed for Administration. The news arrives after early this morning the group's board of directors announced that there was "no equity value left in the group". They said that in a discussion with the firm's stockholders that the firm had had not progressed to offer "a realistic prospect for a solvent solution". Last week the game retailer asked for its shares to be suspended saying that the company's value had been "eroded".
It has long been reported that GAME's grip on the UK games market has been slipping. Initially with the evidence of it's huge dive in share prices at the beginning of this year and more recently it's announcement that it would no longer be stocking Electronic Arts titles.
While it's a shame that there will be more widespread un-employment in the UK due to the company's collapse it does show that the presence of online retailers like Amazon and Play.com are taking their toll on the retail game's market. Furthermore with the popularity of digital distribution services like Steam and Direct2Drive ever increasing it could signify the end of physical game distribution permanently. With the current rumours that the next generation of consoles will be disc drive free it wouldn't be surprising if we were to lose all forms physical media for games within the next decade or so.
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