GameStop recently announced plans to launch an indie game publisher by the name of GameTrust. According to Mark Stanley, GameStop’s vice president of internal development diversification, the retailer’s 46 million customer base and users of the PowerUp Reward are starting to like independently developed games. This makes it a great potential market for GameStop.
This entry into game publishing is the latest expansion beyond the sale of games for GameStop. It’s part of the transformation of the company. If you go back and look at the top indie games from the last few years, there are some $10 million, $20 million, and $30 million titles out there. If you could put together five or 10 of those, it’s a pretty interesting business for us. And of course the gross profit characteristics of this are very different from our retail business because the digital businesses bring strong profit contribution.– Paul Rhines, CEO of GameStop
GameTrust is going to publish indie game developer Insomniac Games’ Song of the Deep. The company has also signed contracts with a variety of other game studios such as Ready at Dawn Studios, FrozenByte, and Tequila Works. By the end of the year, GameTrust is aiming to have published about five to ten indie developers.
Screenshot of Song of the Deep
Rhines believes that expanding into indie games can be the turning point in GameStop’s source of income as it relies more and more on digital sales since 2015.
