A MAJOR video game retail chain is closing one of its popular stores within months.
GAME, inside Manchester’s Trafford Centre, is set to close down in June.
With 240 sites across the UK, the British video game retailer is known for selling PlayStation, XBox, and Nintendo products, as well as board games and PCs.
Signs have been put up around the store warning shoppers of the closure and “all stock must go”, the Manchester Evening News reports.
Shoppers, however, won’t need to go far to continue going to GAME as another store has opened across the bridge inside a new Sport Direct which opened in the Trafford Palazzo.
The new Sports Direct store spreads 30,000 sq ft over two floors, with areas for sports, men, women and kids, and GAME taking a small section of that space.
It includes top sports and leisure brands like Nike, Adidas, Puma, Under Armour, New Balance, ASICS, Sketchers and Jordans.
Frasers Group PLC, which owns GAME, will also integrate another one of its brands USC into the store.
A Trafford Centre spokesperson said: “We’re always working hard to bring new and exciting brands to Trafford Centre, offering our visitors the best possible experience.”
“We’re currently in discussion with a number of retailers and will be in a position to announce which brand will be going in the former GAME store in due course”.
The mall has received various transformations in recent months, including a new multi-million pound food court labelled the ‘Eastern Gardens’, as well as a revamped area known as ‘China Town’.
Trafford Centre director, Simon Layton, told the Manchester Evening News “we wanted to retain that magic with some of the new brands we’re now bringing into the centre”.
[bc_video account_id=”5067014667001″ application_id=”” aspect_ratio=”16:9″ autoplay=”” caption=”Why are shops closing stores? ” embed=”in-page” experience_id=”” height=”100%” language_detection=”” max_height=”360px” max_width=”640px” min_width=”0px” mute=”” padding_top=”56%” picture_in_picture=”” player_id=”default” playlist_id=”” playsinline=”” sizing=”responsive” video_id=”6353582364112″ video_ids=”” width=”640px”]Other well-known Frasers Group brands include Slazenger, Everlast, Evans Cycles, Jack Wills and USA Pro.
It’s worth bearing in mind, retailers often open and close branches based on sales and footfall.
[authenticated-scripts src=”%3Cscript%20class%3D%22palin-poll%22%20src%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thesun.co.uk%2Fpollingwidgets%2Fv3%2Fwidget.js%3Fquestion_id%3D111077%26game%3Dpolling%22%3E%3C%2Fscript%3E” type=”embedded” width=”100″ /]It is not necessarily an indication a business is struggling financially.
That said, GAME has closed a number of stores in recent years, including one in Aberdeen.
[boxout headline=”Why are retailers closing shops?”]EMPTY shops have become an eyesore on many British high streets and are often symbolic of a town centre’s decline.
The Sun’s business editor Ashley Armstrong explains why so many retailers are shutting their doors.
In many cases, retailers are shutting stores because they are no longer the money-makers they once were because of the rise of online shopping.
Falling store sales and rising staff costs have made it even more expensive for shops to stay open.
The British Retail Consortium has predicted that the Treasury’s hike to employer NICs from April 2025, will cost the retail sector £2.3billion.
At the same time, the minimum wage will rise to £12.21 an hour from April, and the minimum wage for people aged 18-20 will rise to £10 an hour, an increase of £1.40.
In some cases, retailers are shutting a store and reopening a new shop at the other end of a high street to reflect how a town has changed.
The problem is that when a big shop closes, footfall falls across the local high street, which puts more shops at risk of closing.
It comes on the back of a tough 2024 when 13,000 shops closed their doors for good, already a 28% increase on the previous year.
Professor Joshua Bamfield, director of the CRR said: “The results for 2024 show that although the outcomes for store closures overall were not as poor as in either 2020 or 2022, they are still disconcerting, with worse set to come in 2025.”
Professor Bamfield has also warned of a bleak outlook for 2025, predicting that as many as 202,000 jobs could be lost in the sector.
“By increasing both the costs of running stores and the costs on each consumer’s household it is highly likely that we will see retail job losses eclipse the height of the pandemic in 2020.”
The chain has closed around a dozen stores in England and Wales since 2023.
In November 2023, the Nuneaton branch in Warwickshire ceased trading.
Then followed the Witney store in Oxfordshire, which closed in January 2024, and the Plymouth branch in Devon, which shut the following month.
The chain’s store in The Broadway Shopping Centre in Bradford closed in November 2024.
The retailer is also set to shut its shop in Bridgewater later this month in a blow for shoppers.
Frasers Group – then known as Sports Direct – acquired Game Digital back in 2019 for £52million.
Game has around 200 stores across the UK, including stores in London and Brighton.