Analysts not surprised by reasons

The Competition Commission has published an issues statement, outlining its reasons for the referral of Game’s acquisition of rival Gamestation.

It has highlighted four main areas of concern: increased market power in pre-owned, trade-in and mint games and the increased purchasing power of the merged entity.

Seymour Pierce analyst Andrew Wade said: “We were not in the least surprised to see this acquisition referred. However, with the competition from supermarkets and the likes of ebay and amazon online (particularly in the pre-owned market) and competitors (such as HMV) increasingly looking to dedicate more space to games given the growth of the segment, we doubt that the competition commission will find too much to be concerned about.”