The video game retailer is branching out from its brick-and-mortar roots, says it's already testing an Android-based tablet and controller for streaming online games.

GameStop has selected Google's Android mobile operating system for an in-house tablet device with pre-loaded titles that the video game retailer has been , an industry publication reported Monday.

Tony Bartel, president of GameStop, said in April that the company was striving to meet the changing needs of consumers who "consume games in a hybrid manner" and was looking at a distribution model along the lines of Apple's App Store and iTunes properties, which deliver apps and content through the iOS platform on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch.

At the time, Bartel said GameStop would consider building its own game-centric tabletand presumably its own operating system to run it. But he told GamesIndustry.biz this week that Android was capable of running what he called a "GameStop-certified gaming platform" and that GameStop would be self-branding existing tablet hardware built by an unspecified third-party manufacturer.

"I don't see any need to create a new [tablet] with the three hundred or so on the market already," Bartel told the trade publication (registration required). "We have a refurbishment centre and we can bring in the product and preload certain games onto it. It's an Android device."

GameStop will sell its gaming tablet alongside consoles and handheld gaming devices from Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, and others, he said. Bartel didn't say when the GameStop tablet would be released, but he told GamesIndustry.biz that the company has been testing the device with consumers in Dallas for the past two weeks.

Bartel said GameStop will ship the tablet with a dedicated controller, though he admitted that "[t]here's not a lot of tablet/android based games for the consumer that are designed to use an external controller."

That means that the GameStop tablet will initially be light on content, so the retailer plans to stream console games to the device as they become available.

"[W]e've created a controller that we're testing to really allow for immersive gameplay," he said. "It's hard to imagine how to stream a gamelet's say Modern Warfare 3onto a tablet and then play it with your finger."

The video game retailer has been branching out from its brick-and-mortar roots in recent months as pressure from online game distributors like Stream and OnLive has begun to be felt.

Earlier this year, GameStop acquired Impulse, a subsidiary of Stardock that provides a digital distribution service, and Spawn Labs, a developer of streaming technology. Impulse has in recent years had about 10 percent of the PC digital game delivery market while Steam controlled a 70 percent share, according to Gamasutra.

Bartel indicated that GameStop feels it has plenty of time to catch up to the established online game distributors, telling GamesIndustry.biz that streamed games still don't deliver "the best consumer experience."

GameStop's tablet plans could be part of an emerging trend in the consumer tablet space that was essentially invented, and still dominated by Apple's iPad. While manufacturers like Research in Motion, Motorola, Hewlett-Packard, and Samsung have struggled to produce a general-purpose tablet to rival the iPad, it may be that a more purpose-built device like GameStop's will find more success.

In addition to GameStop, Amazon is tipped to be creating to be making a tablet that, , appears like it will function more as a delivery device for Amazon's own licensed content than as a more general-purpose computer along the lines of the iPad.