Game Over

Many of you are no doubt familiar with the Game family, one of the most popular game retailers. Many of you no doubt received gift cards for Christmas that you're saving for one of the upcoming big releases of 2012. And many of you have no doubt heard rumours of GAME's upcoming demise. These rumours have been circulating for years, brought on by retailers like Steam and Amazon. And it looks like there is now some accuracy in them.

Stock is the easiest way to measure how well a business is doing, even if error can be created by panicking investors. To give us an idea, let's look at some other game suppliers stock...

The below graphs, courtesy of Google Finance, compare the Game Group (GMG) and Amazon (AMZN). And as you can see...

Amazon (AMZN)

Game Group (GMG)

Oh dear. Back in 2008, buying stock from Game would set you back £296.75, now it's just £2.38. That means that you can now buy more of Game than you can buy games.

And it gets worse. The stock keeps on falling. That means Game is going to be worth less and less.

Apparently we're not the only one's to notice this. Major suppliers have stopped supplying Game, which does nothing for their poor sales. Too widely different games, Mass Effect 3 and Mario Party 9 were notably unavailable in both Game and Gamestation, which made their demise a lot more credible. It seems this is only going to get worse, with more and more suppliers backing out.

We are heading for one of three scenarios:

1. GameStop, or another big game company buys out Game.
2. Game goes into administration, and someone tries to salvage what they can, preserving some jobs.
3. Game dies out altogether.

Personally, I would rather see none of these, and hope that Game pulls through against all the odds. But the only advice I can give you is that now is the time to cash in those Gift Cards.