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Unfortunately there are plenty of debilitating factors preventing this utopian ideal. A quick run down: a luxury/entertainment commodity undermined by cutthroat subsidies of the supermarket chains; the simple fact our generation has to be so frugal thanks to the economic hangover of the Baby Boomers; the entrenched distribution and manufacture models.In short, as darling industry analyst Michael Pachter recognizes, the UK retail industry is "a joke." He goes on with his typical cutting wit and aplomb to surmise that "retailers' failure to make money on games has contributed to high street bankruptcies," due to loss-leading prices. Pachter's delusional bon mots might actually make sense if he was referring to the used game trade or supermarkets.Further insight comes from a source very close to me who works as a retail games buyer for Tesco, who must remain anonymous but requested in all seriousness that I refer to him as "Deepthroat" (it's a Metal Gear in-joke, apparently). He claims that the very biggest stores deliberately loss-lead on their games stock just to divert attention from e-tailers such as Amazon, making up the margins on typical supermarket shit, but that now it's not worth it to the extent they're considering stocking only the surefire AAA hits.The very biggest stores deliberately loss-lead on their games stock just to divert attention from e-tailers such as Amazon, making up the margins on typical supermarket shit.
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If distributors and publishers could break down their old-boy networks, interface with and support these new game spaces, launch events and tournaments, then we'd be getting somewhere.
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