I used to work at an EB Games store back in the day, and it was a heck of a fun job… for about a week anyway. After that first week the soul-crushing dictators at Gamestop finally finished their fiendish assimilation process, introducing us, their new worker drones, to an interesting program known as “sell more goddamn preorders or your ass is fired.” Though I’ve since left the retail world to become a professional journalist, it’s always fun to keep tabs on the ridiculous schemes my former employer comes up with to continue funding their orbital death laser. With their game download service competing (not really) with Steam, and their new cloud-gaming service geared to go after On-Live’s non-existent market, Gamestop is now looking to complete their plans of world domination… with the power of dollar apps?
Apparently sick to their stomachs watching consumers download a billion copies of Angry Birds while ignoring overpriced $60 console releases, Gamestop just announced plans to launch an Android-powered gaming tablet this holiday season. Interestingly, they won’t be developing a whole new piece of hardware, but rather licensing the right to use an existing tablet brand, assumedly slapping their logo on the case and preloading a handful of games. It’s a seemingly strange move, especially given how few other retailers have been able to compete against the iPad. However Gamestop is hoping its focus on the gaming market will be good enough to move units, and they even have plans to include some sort of controller, a thankful inclusion for people like myself (my greasy pizza fingers make it pretty much impossible to beat Infinity Blade).
There’s also rumors they’re trying to get Modern Warfare 3 to run on the thing. I wouldn’t have given this rumor a second thought, but the kid who told me it also said his dad works at NASA, and everybody knows astronauts’ kids aren’t allowed to lie. It’s the law.
