EB Games No More?

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Since EB Games and GameStop merged in 2005, some gamers will tell you the only thing that differentiates the two stores was the sign out front. As of last week, it looks like that final vestige of EB Games is beginning to come down as well.

Two EB Games stores in my neck of the woods, Rochester, NY, were rebranded as GameStop stores last week. And a quick check of EB Games' online store locator reveals these were the last EB Games locations in the 50 miles surrounding the city (an incorrect EB Games listing is included in the store locator, but that store was one of the ones changed to a GameStop last week).

While corporate officers have made no announcements concerning a full-scale changeover from EB Games to GameStop, EB Games stores have slowly been changing to GameStop stores since the merge.

The merged company used the GameStop name to refer to all EB Games/GameStop corporate operations although most EB Games stores and EBGames.com continued to exist. GameStop closed the corporate offices of EB Games in May of 2006, so this extensive store rebranding has been a long time coming. With next week's release of Halo 3 marking the beginning of the holiday sales period, it would make sense that GameStop's corporate officers would want the increased consumer crowds to associate their stores with the "new" company name.

Other major metropolitan areas show an imbalance in the number of GameStop stores versus EB Games stores as well. Only three EB Games exist in the 25 miles surrounding New York City (opposed to 47 GameStops) while Los Angeles is home to four EB Games stores and 46 GameStops.

We at Gaming Target would like to bid a fond farewell to EB Games. Like the console rivalries of today, many gamers preferred one store over the other and most people I knew preferred EB Games over it's lesser competitor, GameStop. The gaming world just won't be the same without you.