Could one of the nation’s most popular and prominent video game retailers be going the way of the dinosaur? It looks like that fear is at least valid, after the company logged a disappointing third quarter in terms of hitting financial goals.

Indeed, according to a report from The Boston Globe, GameStop’s third fiscal quarter for 2014 left much to be desired. The retailer’s total sales equalled $2.09 billion, significantly below the $2.21 billion that had been forecasted for the third quarter. Wall Street experts had predicted that shareholders would earn about 62 cents per share during the quarter. GameStop says the adjusted per-share profit was closer to 57 cents. The poor earnings led the company to adjust outlook for 2014 as a whole, with expected annual per-share profit shifting from $3.55 to $3.40.

Unsurprisingly, GameStop’s disappointing earnings report devalued the company’s stock shares considerably. According to a tech stock report from The USA Today, GameStop shares had dropped 9.8 percent “in pre-market trading” as of Friday morning. Additional drops could be expected, given the unstable state of the physical gaming industry.

The instability of the physical gaming market could be one of the reasons for GameStop’s weak financial quarter. For years, even as music, film, television, and books have shifted more toward digital models, gaming has remained a predominantly physical form of entertainment. Until recently, if a person wanted to buy a new video game title, they would go to a retailer like GameStop and purchase the game on disc (or, in the past, on cartridge).

Now, digital distribution is finally taking hold. In fact, GameStop has estimated that Sony and Microsoft are giving away roughly $100 million in free games with PlayStation 4 or Xbox One bundle packages. Prices for digital downloads of games are also considerably lower than prices for physical games, an inequity that GameStop believes needs to be corrected to “sustain profitability.”

However, while the digital vs. physical argument is undoubtedly a long-term issue for stores like GameStop, it might not have been the only factor that hurt the company’s Q3 earnings. GameStop also pointed a finger at the delay of Assassins Creed: Unity in explaining the poor numbers. The implication is that, without big game releases, gaming retail earnings are naturally lessened.