Gamestop is in the news again, but this time for doing something less exciting than throwing the stock market and our lives into chaos. The massive gaming retailer is adding PC gaming hardware to its online product catalog, which, of course, includes RTX 30-series GPUs. And in case you're wondering, those too are sold out.
Predictably, as soon as folks found out Gamestop was selling GPUs, they were sold out in mere moments. Navigating the PC Games page is a bit of a nightmare, but we've seen a smattering of non-GPU PC gaming products for sale like pre-built systems, monitors, and even a couple of motherboards.
A digital flyer from Gamestop was our first hint that the retail giant was going to dive into the PC hardware market. Gamestop CEO George Sherman said that the company would expand its product offerings with more PC gaming and consumer electronics in an earnings call. There's no word if the new products will be exclusive to Gamestop.com or offered in limited quantities to physical stores.
- Where the AF are all the graphics cards?! It's not just the new RTX 50-series that's impossible to buy, finding any decent GPU in stock at the major US retailers right now is like staring into an abyss of nothing
- Newegg says the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 cards sold out 'in record time' with the retailer claiming its site was dealing with 'an 8-10x increase' in traffic
Gamestop entering the PC gaming hardware scene makes sense considering how Sherman said this move would "reduce our reliance on the cyclicality of the console-based gaming market." The news comes after Gamestop reported a drop in net sales from $2.19 billion to $2.12 billion from last year.
"We are continuing the work to expand our addressable market by growing GameStop's product catalog," says Sherman. "This includes growing our product offerings across PC gaming, computers, monitors, game tables, mobile gaming, and gaming TVs, to name only a few."
This seems like a more practical move for Gamestop than turning some physical locations into internet cafes/event space last year. Though, for most of us, it's just another site where we can be let down by the lack of availability on RTX 3080s as you and I hit F5 over and over again on our browsers.
