After reading oodles about Hollywood Video’s financial woes in recent years, myself and other gamers have been worrying about their pretty-awesome game chain, GameCrazy. (Several GameCrazys closed when Hollywood Video shut down 400 or so stores last year.) I heard some good news yesterday from the manager at the Hagerstown, Maryland, store that it is set to expand soon.

The manager told me in a casual chat yesterday that even though the GameCrazy only takes up about 1/3 of the total floor space that it shares with Hollywood Video, it rakes in about 2/3 of the revenue yearly. So, as you might expect, the location is will soon shrink the floor space of Hollywood Video’s stagnating rentals and will be expanding GameCrazy’s retail space.

I hope this is the start of a trend for other GameCrazy locations, and quite frankly, it’s the first growth-oriented news I’ve heard coming out of the Hollywood Video camp in awhile.

He also told me anecdotally that the nearby Valley Mall, which has no fewer than 2 Gamestops inside, “hates” the nearby GameCrazy location because their better customer service is siphoning away customers. I believe it, although I’m not sure “Better service than Gamestop!” is actually a brag.

All in all, great news for gamers in western Maryland, especially ones who don’t like retail monopolies.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 15th, 2008 at 9:16 pm and is filed under Retail surprises. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.