Kmart and Sears stop selling video games

If any of you have been to a Kmart or Sears store in the past couple of months, you may have noticed that the video game section has been removed from the store. I noticed this very thing this past Saturday when my mom and I visited the Kmart in Vienna Township, Michigan (near I-75 north of Flint).
When I went to the electronics section, I noticed there was hardly any video gaming related merchandise, and whatever was left was all marked as clearance.

After getting home and doing some Internet searches, I found a few threads on various gaming forums that basically confirmed that Kmart and Sears were indeed quitting sales of video games and clearancing whatever they have left. Various reasons were given, primarily that Kmart/Sears weren't paying their vendors for shipments of merchandise.

At first, when I noticed the video game section at Kmart all but gone, I was in initial shock, but later I realized that this could be a sign of the times to come for Sears Holdings.
I remember my mom getting me the original Super Smash Bros. for N64 at this Kmart location, and Pokémon Crystal at another location (which has since closed) shortly after it was released. Kind of bittersweet thinking about this development. I'm wondering now if this is one of the signs that the troubled retailer is close to filing bankruptcy.
Disclaimer: The previous sentence is not investment advice!

Discuss what you think of Kmart and Sears removing their video game sections, and what you believe the reason for such a move could be.
Another point to think of - could this be a signal for other brick-and-mortar retailers (e.g. Target, Walmart, etc.) to follow suit and discontinue video game sales as well?

Ah, I had been wondering about this because last I was in the K-mart close to me they didn't have any games and I was like, "where'd they move them to? This is weird..."

But I don't think Target and Wal-Mart will remove their gaming areas, as theirs are decently large where I live near, so it's not likely that they won't be able to keep them. (Even though I think the Target in Canada is gonna get the boot out if i'm not mistaken...)

No wonder my local Sears no longer sells video games, and unfortunately, my local Kmart is closing down. At least I still have Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy, Gamestop, and Toys R Us.

I asked one of the employes about this last time I was at Kmart and he said that he didn't know much about it. (He actually said that he thought it was a temporary situation.) Really they didn't make enough money from it to justify keeping them in stock, or at least our local Kmart didn't. I don't know about Sears though; we never really go there.

I highly doubt that Walmart will stop selling games anytime soon, since they still make a lot of money off their games. (Or, once again, at least out local walmart does.) Can't say anything about Target though, since there isn't one near us. Or any other retailers really.

I noticed this a few weeks ago when I went to the closest Kmart (we somehow still have two here along with a Sears) to pick up a new SD card and a $20 eshop card. They had the eshop cards, a few accessories and a few not particularly noteworthy games out, but that was it. I didn't really think anything of it at first and just thought they were in the process of moving them somewhere else, grabbed a eshop card and my SD card, and went to checkout, but the eshop card wouldn't ring up for some reason so I ended up having to go over to Kroger for it. Didn't find out about this until a few days later, but I wasn't really surprised since Sears/Kmart has been dying a slow, painful death for awhile now.

The only other place around here that isn't Gamestop that sells video games is Walmart, but I don't see them getting rid of video games any time soon because it's Walmart.

I also noticed this when I went to my local Kmart and saw absolutely nothing for video games. The section was cleared out in favor of the "As Seen On TV" gadgets. It's not surprising, though, since Kmart/Sears hasn't been doing too well making profits. Also, when OmegaRuby/AlphaSapphire and Super Smash Bros. were released, Kmart couldn't get in any copies of those games for unknown reasons.

It doesn't really affect me, since I get the majority of my video games from Amazon or Target, and there's going to be a Wal-Mart built right across the street from my job. But it does hit me right in the nostalgia, since I got my NES from Kmart.

I don't think I've bought a game from Kmart in years (or even gone to Kmart in years for that matter), so them deciding to stop game sales is not going to affect me in the least. There are definitely other places I'd rather get my games from.

I don't think it's a sign that other places should stop selling games as well, though. As long as people are willing to still buy games from such stores, then there's not really much point in stopping that practice. And I dunno, if Kmart and Sears are going to stop doing so, then that just means potentially more customers for the other stores...maybe, maybe not.

This depresses me a bit because the first video game I ever bought was from K-mart, so it's sad to see them stop selling games. It doesn't really affect me, because we have loads of other video game places around the city.

Sears was a good store, it's reaching its end days though.
My local Sears had the cheapest video games usually, so it was like a hidden treasure. Which is weird because on their site they are usually double or triple the regular price.

Were those stores major video game sellers? Because I can completely understand if sales were poor in general. Thankfully, it's not like there aren't a shortage of venues to buy video games. Even if that was the case you still buy stuff online, so unless those stores were offering incredible deals that I just never paid attention to then I'm not too concerned by the news.

Orpheus said:

I asked one of the employes about this last time I was at Kmart and he said that he didn't know much about it. (He actually said that he thought it was a temporary situation.) Really they didn't make enough money from it to justify keeping them in stock, or at least our local Kmart didn't. I don't know about Sears though; we never really go there.

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Same. I asked the employee at K-mart when I found their video game section in ruins, and he said he didn't know, either. He mentioned that they just sold their last Xbone like a week earlier, and some lady remarked that they must not have been very popular, and he said, "It was like our best-seller. I don't get why they're pulling everything."

I went in search of Yoshi's New Island about a month ago, and everything was already picked over. They only had a few handfuls of games practically nobody buys, like Barbie and Hello Kitty and what have you, and ONE copy of The Evil Within for PS4. That was their gaming section. No consoles, no controllers, no accessories, nothing. 5 rows of shelves, all of them nearly empty. It looked so sad. :c


Our nearest Gamestop is almost a 3-hour round trip away, so our K-mart had a really big gaming section. It was bigger than the rest of their electronic section, it's weird to see it so barren.
The Wal-Mart out here must be super stoked to be the only one selling video games in the entire damn county now.

We don't have KMart in Canada, and Sears is going down the toilet :pink_tongue:

I did go into Target Canada during liquidation yesterday and they still only had games at 25%-off. Still not worth it. They were still sellling SSBB for Wii for 59,99$ regular price (you kiddin' me?). They really didn't do well up here.

Our one and only K-Mart bit the dust a few years ago and I never even knew Sears sold games in the first place, honestly. So this doesn't really affect me. I go to the GameStop I work at and a hole in the wall store that's local for all my gaming needs, personally. I sometimes use Target or Best Buy since they have good deals sometimes, but I don't foresee those places getting rid of their game sections.

I didn't even know that Sears did sell video games.

Alli said:

Our one and only K-Mart bit the dust a few years ago and I never even knew Sears sold games in the first place, honestly. So this doesn't really affect me. I go to the GameStop I work at and a hole in the wall store that's local for all my gaming needs, personally. I sometimes use Target or Best Buy since they have good deals sometimes, but I don't foresee those places getting rid of their game sections.

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Necrum said:

I didn't even know that Sears did sell video games.

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You guys didn't hear about that price-matching scandal? Sears accidentally put the 3DS XL Blue as like, 70$ on their website, and places like Walmart were forced initially - as per policy - to price-match until the error was confirmed. One guy made off with ten of them at one Walmart for 700$ and probably resold for closer to 2,200$ on eBay, etc.

Belldandy said:

We don't have KMart in Canada, and Sears is going down the toilet :pink_tongue:

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Yeah, I was about to say "what is KMart", and the only Sears I remember was in Downtown, which closed like two years ago. :P The Bay is just dominating over here, none of the other department store chains are doing very well.

Either way, I've always gone to EB Games or Futureshop for my games and consoles, so it doesn't really affect me. IIRC even when it existed, the Sears we had didn't really have a toys section in the first place, much less video games - it seems like most department stores over here only sell clothes, makeup and jewellery.

The kmarts in australia meanwhile keep selling video game stuff, so I suppose it's an America thing (I don't believe we have Sears either). I think these won't lead to other stores following suit over there, it may just be an individual business decision, and maybe not a permanent one either.

I was planning on stopping by sometime so I'll do a check when I go out. No surprise if our local Kmart stopped selling games since we have a GameStop just a few stores down in the same shopping plaza, ahaha. It just doesn't work out for them and I've only ever bought one game from Kmart in my near-ten years of living here.

All the K Marts around here closed down last year, and Sears.. the local one is pretty dead, though I went in a month or two ago and they really didn't have many games to speak of even then. Kind of a same. Though, now days most places have game stores of some kind, and those are usually pretty well off. If K Mart and Sears wanna stop, then I guess that's their loss. > >;

I did get a couple games at Kmart a long time ago. Totally forgot Sears even sold games.