The "Wembley of Gaming" to shut down; replacement in the pipeline?

Less than two years ago it was announced that millions would be invested into the UK gaming scene with the refurbishment of previous Omega Sektor venues and the construction of a new gaming venue in Birmingham. You may remember that the new  venue was labeled as the "Wembley Stadium of Gaming" by some of the press, however, after little more than a year of being open to the public, it has been announced that it will have to be shut down due to huge debts.

According to an article at Cadred.org, the company which was in possesion of the centres in Harrow and Birmingham (Clearmist Consultants Limited) has ran up debts in excess of $500,000 which lead to the company going into administration and shutting its doors for good. Furthermore, due to the company being in business for less than 2 years, all the staff have been made redundent without any form of redundancy payment.

However, amongst all this bad news there is a glimmer of hope for the UK scene. According to Cadred, there are plans for Gamerbase to build a similar centre in Manchester. Gamerbase are owned entirely by HMV, one of the UK's largest dealers in entertainment, be it music, video games, dvds or even books!