Gamestop, the controversial retailer that was recently behind the closure of the beloved magazine Game Informer, has just announced the launch of several Retro Gamestops" in the US, where people will be able to purchase classic games for a range of old consoles.
The announcement was made yesterday on Twitter, with the company tweeting "THE CLASSICS ARE BACK. New Retro GameStops are now spawning near you." The announcement linked to a store locator and included a set of images with a list of consoles that will reportedly be in stock.
This list of platforms includes NES, SNES, Game Boy Advance, Game Boy, N64, Nintendo DS, Wii, Wii U, Nintendo GameCube, Xbox, Xbox 360, PS1, PS2, PS3, PS Vita, Sega Genesis, Sega Saturn, and Dreamcast. So, in other words, there are absolutely no Atari platforms listed at the moment.
For some, the news that GameStop will be stocking retro games will be a promising development as it represents yet another place to pick up their favourite retro games, but there are also a lot of reasonable concerns that we expect many people to have.
Pricing is an obvious factor, with the retro market currently seeing a lot of retailers, both online and elsewhere, charging ridiculous amounts for older games. However, a bigger issue in our mind is authenticity and whether GameStop will actually put the time into training their staff to recognize fakes that are already widely circulated on the secondhand market. This will be particularly important, as these are not brand new stores, as the announcement implies, but instead existing locations that will carry retro stock.
Time will tell whether this is a good thing or not, but it's probably best to approach it with a healthy level of skepticism for now.