I realized that no one but me knew the events of that evening. Not an evening exactly, an afternoon, and the reason no one knew them is because I couldn’t remember them. I wanted to write about it but couldn’t remember until I wrote whatever this was.
Now that I remember what I wouldn’t to write about I can. I went to the mall yesterday to get some Popeyes and to see if they had a Spirit Halloween as the kids have been asking to go. While there I decided to go into the GameStop to use a $100 AmEx gift card but I couldn’t, because GameStop didn’t have what I was looking for. The digital version released before physical.
While that is meaningless in its own right there are other issues emerging. GTA VI, the biggest game of the year, is releasing digital only, Sony has announced their next system won’t support physical disks, and Microsoft filed for a patent to show commercials in games (clearly to offer a lower priced or free tier in Gamepass).
That is a lot of bad news at once for a company in recovery mood attached to a decaying ecosystem. I don’t know what the future of GameStop is. To watch physical games disappear and then become another Spencer’s Gifts/Hot Topic mall store? That seems the most likely outcome unless they can pivot to being a retro store.
The world is in an interesting transition phase. It is going to be a period of a lot of rapid changes. Things are coming and faster than a lot of people think. Technology moves at a rate of slow at first and then all at once and we are approaching that all at once point with multiple technologies.
It is a little scary to think about but also a little exciting, because with any massive change we have to figure out our place in it.
