GameStop aims to point out that there is a big difference between funding and developing video game content. The company stresses that it plans to only provide financial support in the content's development. It has no plans to get involved in the game's actual development stage, particularly on the creative side of it.
Instead, the company is leaving everything up to the developers which it believes are the experts in a game development's creative process. As reiterated by company CEO Paul Raines, "I think it's pretty clear to me, and that's that you won't see us involved in the creative process. That's not something we do well. We love to play games, and unlike our competitors all we do is gaming. But we will not be involved in the artistic or creative process. That's not really our domain."
According to a report, GameStop plans to fund the game's development phase as a way to gain more exclusive content such as DLC and pre-order bonuses. Being the largest and a leading game retailer, the company wants to establish a longer lead time. In the future, it hopes to provide customers with more physical and digital exclusive titles.
The company is still in the early stages of negotiating with game publishers. The goal is to widen the customer reach by making the loyalty programs and consumer base of the company more amenable and compatible to game releases. Currently, the company's PowerUp Rewards program has more than 34 million members worldwide.
"We play a lot of indie games here, trying to find interesting ideas and concepts, and I see some great games that never get published or distributed because of the cost associated with it," said Raines. "So we kind of feel like it's a little bit of an emancipation of the development community if we can find a way to connect them directly with customers."
Though the company may have more than 6,000 retail stores all over the US, it stresses that funding for the development of an exclusive game content will be made available to only one of its retail outlets. This strategy is not really something new for the company. For several years, GameStop has been boosting the exclusive sales and pre-orders of some of their products such as weapons, peripheral content, and character unlocks through physical store or pre-order purchases.
After all these statements, there are still those that are concerned with GameStop's plans for the future. Fans are asking for more details and wanted to understand better how the company's exclusive content will evolve.
