Games retail safe for 10-20 years

Despite the growing popularity of digital games retail – and the clear desire of platform holders to sell their games direct to consumers – US analyst Michael Pachter thinks traditional bricks and mortar retail will be safe for some time yet.

In fact, ahead of GameStop’s financial report tomorrow Pachter has predicted that games retail will be safe for anything up to 2030.

While we don’t expect investors to abandon the view that a migration of software sales to digital downloads is inevitable, we think thatGameStop is likely to continue to gain market share over the next several years, as its core customer values the option of trading inphysical goods for store credit,” he said in an investor note.

We think that this customer will be among the last to embrace digital downloads, and think that thecompany has anywhere from 10 to 20 years of healthy earnings and cash flow generation ahead of it.”