Game retailer GameStop buys a publisher

Beijing Time July 28 news, according to foreign media reports, the United States largest video game and game machine retailer GameStop Tuesday announced that the company has agreed to buy online game publishers Kongregate.　　GameStop did not disclose details of the deal to buy Kongregate. By acquiring Kongregate, it will help GameStop enter the online gaming market. With the introduction of new technologies such as Facebook and the iphone, and high-speed Internet access, consumers have become increasingly accustomed to online gaming. GameStop, the largest video game retailer in the United States, currently has more than 6,400 retail outlets worldwide. GameStop has said it will spend about $100 million trillion this year on its digital business expansion, including mergers and acquisitions.　　GameStop wants to use business transitions to avoid the same fate as music and movie retailers. Digital publishers like Apple's itunes store and Netflix have been the biggest beneficiaries of the industry's transformation, while retailers such as Blockbuster and Tower Records have suffered heavy losses in the transition. Market analysts believe that GameStop is still in development and profitability, the internet will pose a huge challenge to the company. "The most basic business model of GameStop is at risk because of the transfer of real-store revenue to digital business," said Evan Wilson, an industry analyst at Pacific Crest Nomura, the US investment bank. Our view is that this transformation will be unavoidable. "The current advantage of GameStop is that the number of video game consoles, such as the Xbox 360 and PS3, remains quite large, because of the limited network connection speed and the ability to store video games, which are difficult to place on the Internet." Paul Raines, chief executive of GameStop, said in an interview that these technical hurdles would eventually be overcome, but it is not clear when the targets will be met.　　Ms. Raines believes that GameStop will become one of the leading players in the Internet gaming market when these transitions take place. Social gaming is now booming on the internet, and Zynga's farm-game Farmville has nearly 60 million months of active users.　　Apple's itunes is now becoming a more important gaming network retailer, as more and more consumers are using iphones and ipad tablets to play games. At the same time, the revenues of traditional gaming retailers are showing signs of weakness.　　U.S. video game retail sales fell 6% from 1.17 billion to $1.1 billion this year in June, according to market research firm NPD Group. Kongregate currently has an average of about 10 million players, the company has more than 30,000 games, most of which are web games. Kongregate itself does not develop games, mainly by about 8,500 game developers for their development of various types of games. Tony Bartel, president of GameStop, said that nearly half of Kongregate's revenue came from advertising and the other half from the virtual currency business. Tonibater (Edit Zhang Xing)