GameStop has faced an onslaught of challenges in recent years, given the rapidly evolving gaming industry landscape.

Co-founder Gary Kusin, who has watched the company navigate turbulent times, including the infamous 2021 short squeeze orchestrated by Reddit users (it sent the stock soaring temporarily), says the company needs to cut its footprint until it can find a profitable path forward.

CEO Ryan Cohen has “got to reduce the footprint of stores,” said Kusin, who has a track record of building businesses in the retail space from GameStop to Laura Mercier.

Kusin co-founded the video game retailer Babbage’s in the 1980s, which now operates as GameStop. He stepped down in 1995.

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Kusin said the company could stand to shutter about 90% of the stores that come up for lease renewal every year.

This will “reduce the requirement to maintain staff and all the things they have to do for those locations until they can figure out some categories that will put enough revenue through the four walls that they can pay the overhead, the rent, the people to be there and generate a return on investment,” Kusin said.

The company’s original business model was geared toward selling physical games. It couldn’t compete as digital downloads and online gaming platforms exploded. It has struggled to adapt and announced an unspecified number of layoffs to reduce costs and improve efficiency after taking a financial hit in the fourth quarter, according to a regulatory filing.

Kusin said the company has “tried a bunch of things and none of them have worked” and noted that its massive storefront is partly to blame, saying that “nothing works in a 10,000-store footprint, unless it’s a historically enormous sector.”

The best thing to do is reduce “the impact of that large footprint” and experiment.

The situation GameStop is currently facing is not all that different from Blockbuster, whose outdated business model failed to compete with the rise of streaming services, according to Kusin.

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But while Blockbuster had “nowhere to go,” he said GameStop could have an advantage: used video games.

“There will be a very long tail on the used end of that business for people in lower economic stratas who love video games but can’t afford either the bandwidth or the massive multiplayer or everything they need to be set up,” said Kusin, who detailed his career in the upcoming book, “Always Learning: Lessons on Leveling Up, from GameStop to Laura Mercier and Beyond.”

He added that the “used market still has legs.”

But while Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter agreed with Kusin that GameStop should shrink its physical footprint, he argued that the best path forward is to shut down and sell the brand.

“There is not an intelligent investor alive who owns GameStop,” Pachter said.

He argued that the company could have leaned into the used market 10 years ago because publishers who sell games today prefer digital downloads.

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“The point is that as games get more digital, there’s less physical [games] available to trade in,” he said. “The percentage that grows digital is the percentage [that] shrinks physical.” 

Hardcore gamers who trade in every game will keep buying a physical product. The issue is that used revenue is directly correlated to new physical game sales.

“Physical sales aren’t going to ever get better,” Pachter said. “It’s not going to ever stabilize. It will continue to decline. And the reason it will continue to decline is we have a whole generation of kids growing up who have never seen a physical copy of the game.”

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As Indians start casting votes in the 44-day election that started Friday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk will meet, with reports indicating that Musk will announce an investment of $2 billion to $3 billion in the country.

“I don’t think Mr. Musk is going to make a huge impact, positive or negative, on Mr. Modi, but [his visit’s] going to solidify Modi as someone who’s able to attract the world’s fanciest corporations to India to manufacture in India,” Siddhartha Dubey, a journalism professor based in Evanston, Illinois, told Fox News Digital.

“Mr. Modi is going to win these elections, no doubt about that,” Dubey added. “He doesn’t need Elon Musk to help him.”

“What Mr. Modi is really, really good at is turning a figure like Elon Musk, the world’s richest man who lives in America, into ‘Look at me. Look how well I’m doing. I am able to attract the world’s wealthiest man to India. Vote for me.’”

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Musk met with Modi last year during the prime minister’s visit to the U.S. in November, when Musk revealed that he remains “confident that Tesla will be in India and will do so soon as humanly possible.”

The Tesla founder seems set to make good on that promise with a massive investment potentially upward of $3 billion, earmarked mainly to build a new factory, according to the Indian Express newspaper. The duo is to meet on Monday to discuss details of the plan that will see Tesla enter the world’s third-largest car market – and to boost an Indian electric car market that remains underdeveloped.

Electric vehicles (EVs) made up just 2% of total car sales in India in 2023, with the government aiming to grow that to 30% starting in 2030, and Tesla will welcome the shift in focus as EV sales in the U.S. and China slow and Tesla has cut jobs, The Hindu newspaper reported.

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“Tesla has no footprint, really, in India in terms of electric cars,” Dubey said. “The biggest player in the Indian market right now is Tata [Motors], but Hyundai as well as Mahindra, another Indian manufacturer, and Toyota have strong ambitions for India, and they’re all producing a range of electric cars.”

“The thing about Tesla is that it’s a premium brand, and Indians are very price conscious,” Dubey noted. “So, in regard to selling mass-market electric vehicles in India at a scale, [Tesla’s] pricing has to be really, really important, otherwise, I really don’t think it’s going to work.” 

Some have argued that Modi would capitalize on Musk to help boost his ability to create jobs by expanding EV production in his country – thanks to a potential Tesla factory – and other tech-related initiatives that would help drive down the country’s unemployment rate. 

India currently suffers from a high unemployment rate among its young college graduate population, with 40% of people ages 20 to 25 unable to find jobs, according to political economist Parakala Prabhakar, who cited the International Labor Organization during a national colloquium on the issue. 

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Prabhakar also noted that domestic investment fell from 30% to 19%. Modi, simultaneously, has urged international investors to put their money into India and “link their growth” with the country’s rapid rise. India last year overtook the United Kingdom and became the fifth-largest economy in the world, rising four places during Modi’s time in office.

Dubey said the current tax on EVs is a “considerable” deterrent to Indian consumers; India is looking at reducing tax rates on imported EVs by around 15%, a significant drop from the current 100% that exists now. Modi has tried to bring the rate down, looking to expedite the adoption to help clear a path for Musk.

Tesla has directed its Berlin factory to start producing right-hand-drive cars with the goal of exporting them to India this year to help speed up adoption.

Details about the plan remain scarce, but reports indicate that Musk will not provide details about a timeline or location of the plant within India. Some have suggested that New Delhi or Mumbai as likely locations.

Dubey, however, noted that Musk presents another opportunity for India: a major boost in the space race, which India has eagerly pursued in recent years. The Indian Space Research Organization, the national space agency of India, in August 2023 successfully completed the first-ever landing on the moon’s southern pole – a feat Russia failed to achieve just days earlier.

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“India’s space industry is really exciting, especially with the last several successful rocket launches, including an unmanned mission to the moon,” Dubey said.

“The start-up and private sector in space, which, mind you, is … largely a government sector, is really exciting because a lot of capital [is] going into it,” he said. “A lot of very smart Indians as well as Israeli and American and European investors are looking at that industry in India, and that’s another place where Mr. Musk, I think, can benefit a lot from his participation.”

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The cost of buying a new house just hit a fresh record as mortgage rates rose to the highest level this year, according to a new report.

Findings from Redfin show the combination of steep mortgage rates and elevated home prices has pushed the median monthly housing payment to a record $2,775 – an 11% increase from the same time last year.

“Market conditions for homebuyers remain challenging with few homes listed and costs for ownership still climbing,” said Ben Ayers, Nationwide senior economist. “Despite strong fundamentals for demand from demographics and a strong labor market, many first-time buyers are being shut out of the market by elevated financing rates and rising prices.”

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There are a number of driving forces behind the affordability crisis. Years of underbuilding fueled a shortage of homes in the country, a problem that was later exacerbated by the rapid rise in mortgage rates and expensive construction materials.

Higher mortgage rates over the past three years have created a “golden handcuff” effect in the housing market. Sellers who locked in a record-low mortgage rate of 3% or less during the pandemic began have been reluctant to sell, limiting supply further and leaving few options for eager would-be buyers.

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Economists predict that mortgage rates will remain elevated for the first half of 2024 and that they will only begin to fall once the Federal Reserve starts cutting rates. Even then, rates are unlikely to return to the lows seen during the pandemic. On top of that, investors are growing skeptical about the odds of a Fed rate hike this year given the string of hotter-than-expected inflation reports at the beginning of the year.

“Some house hunters are hoping to buy now because they’re concerned rates could rise more, and others have grown accustomed to elevated rates and pushed down their home-price budget accordingly,” the Redfin report said.

Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday that the average rate on a 30-year loan this week crossed the 7% threshold for the first time this year, jumping from 6.88% to 7.1%. While that is down from a peak of 7.79% in the fall, it remains sharply higher than the pandemic-era lows of just 3%.

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Available home supply remains down a stunning 34.3% from the typical amount before the COVID-19 pandemic began in early 2020, according to a separate report published by Realtor.com.

Most homeowners say they are nearly twice as willing to sell their home if their mortgage rate is 5% or higher, according to a separate Zillow survey. Currently, about 80% of mortgage holders have a rate below 5%.

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