Best Buy CFO hints of video game industry involvement

Best Buy has to expand in other areas besides the decades-old categories is currently serves up if it wants to become larger. Its push into the red-hot mobile space with Best Buy Mobile is a great example. But, it will take more than that. Entertainment is a hotter slice of retail pie than hardware, and the company knows it. It still has to keep customers coming into stores, and since video games are not now moving to an internet-only distribution like music has, there's an opportunity to expand.

Best Buy needs a way to automate video game bartering in its stores, and an automated kiosk system for used video games may be just what it needs. But used video games aren't the only deal -- new ones are as well. New video games are quite expensive amid the financial pinch occupying U.S. wallets and purses -- but it won't always be that way.

Gamestop may make an admirable purchase for the retailer, and buying younger companies that can be folded into its way of doing business is Best Buy's preferred M&A strategy. But still, with all kinds of entertainment moving to an online distribution method, should Best Buy get in now? It should; that is, if it wants to remain relevant in a space that won't do anything but grow.