GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen has sparked a fiery debate in the gaming community after remarking that sales of physical games are “totally irrelevant” to his business.
Cohen made the divisive statement in a July 16 interview with Bloomberg TV after being asked how GameStop could be impacted by Sony’s industry-changing decision to stop printing physical game discs for new PlayStation games starting January 2028.
In response, he argued that the bulk of GameStop’s income hinges on sales of collectibles, rather than gaming software, insisting that the games themselves are chump change compared to the figures, merch, and trading cards GameStop is currently focused on putting in stores.
“It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter at all,” he told the outlet. “Software… it mattered in the past. Software today makes up less than 12% of the business, and collectibles makes up over half the business. So it’s totally, totally irrelevant.”
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“GameStop is a business that was on the brink of bankruptcy, and everybody was betting against it for good reason,” Cohen said earlier in the interview. “And now the company is making more money than it’s ever made in its history.”
When asked about the potential for Rockstar’s highly-anticipated Grand Theft Auto 6 to bring in big business for GameStop, Cohen completely ignored the question, choosing instead to discuss his failed $55.5 billion bid for eBay back in May.
“I want you to look your viewers in the eyes and tell them, ‘Are you gonna bet on an entrenched management team running the business, or me, someone that went head to head against Amazon selling 30-pound bags of dog food, turned around a very tough situation at GameStop, and now the company is making lots of money?” he posed.
Earlier in the interview, Cohen gave an example of what future sales might look like at GameStop, saying the brand could “unlock live commerce” and use its physical stores for “same-day authentication” while using eBay’s infrastructure — if the deal ever goes through — to “build out an in-game, digital marketplace.”
This is Cohen’s latest viral interview following his bizarre remarks in a conversation with CNBC’s Squawk Box program back in May, where he said he “didn’t understand the question” when asked by hosts where GameStop would get the money to purchase eBay.
At the beginning of 2025, GameStop had around 2,325 locations in the U.S., but by the end of the year it had closed 590 of them. It then kicked off 2026 by closing even more stores as part of an effort to reduce costs.
For years now some have called GameStop a dying bricks and mortar retailer as it looks to new and often bizarre ways to generate revenue. August 2023 saw the company pull out of crypto, and it shut its short-lived NFT marketplace just a few months later. More recently (and much to the dismay of its employees), GameStop held its first-ever Trade Anything Day, which saw customers bringing in literally anything for trade-in credit at their local stores.
Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images.
Virginia (she/her) is IGN’s News Editor. With ten years of experience reporting on games and entertainment, she’s got a storied background in the fighting game community, influencer news, and viral online trends. Find her on Twitter at @TheeMissGlaze.
