GameStop Claims It’s Evolving into a Technology Company Following Impulse Acquisition

Posted 04/03/2011 at 10:55am | by Justin Kerr

6

Comments

Print

GameStop has been watching the declining fortunes of brick and mortar bookstores over the past several years, and I think it’s safe to say the company’s management knows they are headed down a similar path. The first nod towards acknowledging the problem came just two days ago with the acquisition of Stardock’s Impulse PC distribution platform, along with a second company named Spawn Lab’s which specializes in on-live style streaming. Yesterday GameStop’s CEO Paul Raines detailed his future plans for the new acquisitions, and actually claims that he sees the retailer evolving in into a full-fledged “Technology Company”.

Aside from the obvious branching out to compete with Steam and On-Live, The Dallas Morning News gathered additional details about the company’s plans which include expansion into mobile, and even a GameStop branded tablet. "If we feel like we could do a better job of making a tablet, we'll do that." Since both of these are considered tentative long term goals, it remains to be seen just how serious they are about this “evolution”, or if priorities will change between now and then. 

Either way we find it somewhat amusing that GameStop might be forced to rely on PC Gamer’s to pay the bills as next generation consoles ramp up their own proprietary online marketplace capabilities, and they find themselves being slowly squeezed out. Does the acquisition of Impulse make these guys a viable competitor?

Let us know what you think in the comments below.