It's a madhouse right now. The entire industry, I mean. All the more so for a month that's typically a bit of a slowdown. Wizards of the Coast announced a bunch of Magic products, one of which we don't get to know anything about until players start opening packs at a table. There was suddenly a new edition and new printing of Wingspan, and none of us have any idea from day to day whether we're going to have too much of that title or zero on the shelves. Most of the attention in new video games is directed toward 2020 and the launches of the Playstation 5 and the Xbox... uh, Two, while the Nintendo Switch released a quiet version update and a less quiet Lite variant. We continue to see digital storefronts de-list games that then become obtainable only by the original physical media. And will there be tariffs? If so, when? Who knows?
For DSG's part, we finally finished building my back office and workshop, and we're setting up to have a three-phase revamp of the game room floor. Getting all the shipping equipment and such out of the main part of the building is also part of our Wizards Premium Store application, a process that's finally almost finished. The 1st phase continues after the removal of shipping equipment (and my workstation) to the back room, with a reconfiguration of the singles backstage area and my staff workstations there. That opens up a few hundred square feet of floor and it will be shaped differently, so we get to adjust how the "big tables" for non-TCG games are deployed. Phase 2 will enclose those table areas for privacy and admission gating. Phase 3 will mostly be software, and swapping out some fixtures that we've been meaning to phase out.
Many of you have been following my biannual store closure articles here on the blog, where I list all the stores I've been informed about that have hung up their spurs during the six months prior. The list for January 2020's article about the second half of 2019 is going to be a doozy, and includes multiple local stores, with more that I suspect will announce before much longer. The closures track with some of the industrywide tectonic shifts that we've been seeing grow for years now, and I think in a couple of months we're going to have clarity on a few things. On other things? Foggier than ever, I am sure.
In the video game world, I'm approaching 20 or so Sega Game Gears sitting in back storage because none of them work, because all Game Gears are broken now. They are all recoverable, however. They do power up, but they need their capacitors replaced in order to have video and sound. The Game Gear was an underappreciated system that lately is starting to stoke interest in retro circles, because its catalog was thick with rare Japanese-style RPGs and other genres favored by otaku more than mainstream gamers. Moreover, it uses a common Genesis v2 AC adapter, so we don't have to chew through untold quantities of AA batteries or chase down a rare power cable, assuming we can get a working system in the first place. Unfortunately, the necessary capacitor replacement, at least on a unit-by-unit basis, projects to a lot of labor time, and with parts and troubleshooting could add around $60-$70 to the cost sunk into one system, that would then be able to sell for, at most, $80-$100. Thooooough... now some enterprising folks have been developing drop-in LCD replacement screens and other quality-of-life mods that push the viable resale price of a "maxed out" Game Gear to $250 and up, though with parts and labor sunk in of at least $150. There has to be a way to assembly-line this and use some economy of scale to bring a bunch of these back to life cost-effectively, and looking around at eBay listings, there are already some guys doing this, so proof-of-concept passes muster. I just need to do some diligence on that process, and until then, I'll keep buying the broken ones at $2 to $5 each depending on condition and stowing them for later.
Meanwhile we're smack in the middle of the craziest and most insane football season I can ever remember. Even when we get to Sunday business, which is kind of rote at this point -- lots of buys, a short day, booster drafting, Pokemon league, and catching up on my admin work -- there's the backdrop of all the awesome football going on. I've never been happier to have NFL Red Zone at the store, for as little as I get to sit and watch it for more than a few minutes at a time.
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