Tesco Direct shutting down to coalesce services

Tesco has announced that it will shut down its non-food item order and delivery service, Tesco Direct, on July 9. The company intends to focus its efforts on its main grocery services, Tesco.com, and will add some non-food items to the site's offerings soon.

The service is ending due to high fulfillment and online marketing costs. A statement shared with Eurogamer says that Tesco Direct had, "no route to profitability."

Tesco Direct carried, among other things, video games. Those who have ordered games from the service that are due to arrive by July 9 will still receive them, while any orders due later than that will be canceled and refunded.

It is unknown at this point whether video games will continue to be sold on Tesco.com. The food-focused site will sell "a selected range of items that were previously available on Tesco Direct," and the larger range of in-store items will remain the same.

"We want to offer our customers the ability to buy groceries and non-food products in one place and that's why we are focusing our investment into one online platform," said Tesco UK boss Charles Wilson. "This decision has been a very difficult one to make, but it is an essential step towards establishing a more sustainable non-food offer and growing our business for the future."