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Game Retailers to Have a Good Holiday Season
A story is up at the NYT (registration required) regarding this year's holiday sales, an interview with the President of Electronics Boutique. From the article: "Q. Are consumers spending as much this holiday shopping season? Wal-Mart says they're spending less. A. Based upon what we saw over the weekend and what we've seen for the month of November, I'd have to say that, at least on video games, they're spending a lot more. I do think the category is going to have a strong holiday season." I know it's a small thing, but the staff writer refers to Mario as a "construction worker". Could have done some more research there, sport.
The texts I read referred to him as either a carpenter or a zoo keeper in DK. Apparently Nintendo itself wasn't too sure about that or their branches (NoA/NoE) don't agree on the subject.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
As video games become more mainstream, and Microsoft's push to have a 'media center pc' that can do almost everything including playing games (I'm thinking of the future, bare with me) more people are going to spend more money on games, than on for example CD's or DVDs. I for one would rather play a great PC or console game that sit in front of the TV for a couple hours. This isn't true for everyone yet, but like I said, it is a growing trend.(See multiple previous /. stories about lower audiences for television.)
;)
I agree that the increased release of high budget (but not always great) game releases has produced extra sales. I would rather put a new video game on my list than the newest DVD.
Notice Halo 2 IS NOT on his list
How many of us buy games at wal-mart? How many of us avoid wal-mart at all costs?
Right.
Rip-offs.
Like Hanukkah.
Which celebrates events that took place in 165 B.C.E.
Rip-offs.
--AC
On top of that, Mario was originally (circa Donkey Kong) concepted as a carpenter.
The Donkey Kong character was originally called Jumpman until his "jump," if you'll pardon the pun, to the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). The Mario character had no conscious design until the arcade game Mario Bros. where he was given the job of plumber. Jumpman was an early predecessor of today's Mario, so, technically, Mario has only been a construction worker in Wrecking Crew for the NES and Wrecking Crew '98 (also known as BS Wrecking Crew 98) for the Super Famicom.
Considering that the year's two most-anticipated games and a new hardware system were released in November, I'd say the November data is a bit skewed.
It's normal for big releases to come out in November but I think Halo 2 and Half Life 2 are special cases.
For everyone else, the price of fuel is insignificant. I make decent money, and my family drives two fuel-efficient cars. The cost of gasoline could double and I wouldn't even notice it. People like me are much more likely to buy video games than the average Wal-mart customer, and so the price of fuel does not affect my spending habits.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
As others have stated this is a pretty holiday-heavy time of year for Americans. First off are our two non-religious ones that bookend it: Thanksgiving and New Year's. This makes the holiday season roughly November-January (or to those complaining about it it starts the day after Halloween when retailers start pushing for the next big holiday). In between you've got a big mess of religious, pseudo-religious, psuedo-secular and largely obsolete holidays: Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa (a recent holiday created in 1966 and designed for those of African descent, frankly most people don't really recognize it though), the winter solstice, Saturnalia, and sometimes even Ramadan (due to the use of a lunar calendar Islamic holidays correspond to different Gregorian dates).
Speaking as an atheist I definitely prefer the use of "the holidays" even though I know that in common usage it often implies Christmas as one of those. Part of the reason is that Christmas is becoming such an increasingly secular holiday that I only feel slightly odd celebrating it as "annual commercial gift-receiving day" with a complement of traditions and practices that aren't directly Christian in origin.
I just placed my first - and last - order on playstation.com. I only ordered from them in the first place, because they were the only place I could find the particular games I was looking for, which were for a Christmas present.
Well, rather than receiving my order, I received a pair of emails stating that my credit refund had been processed. When I asked why I was getting a refund, I was told that they had received my return, so I they were refunding the order - but I wasn't informed about any refund on the shipping.
Of course, I knew I hadn't returned the order, since I didn't even receive it to begin with. Obviously they must have shipped it to the wrong address, and it got refused on delivery. I double-checked the order's details, and I indeed got the shipping information correctly so it's their shippers at fault. But, rather than resend my order, I was politely informed that I need to place a new order - no mention about receiving a refund on shipping, or any special code to enter to not pay shipping on the new order.
Needless to say, I have no intention of ordering from Playstation.com in the future, and informed them that I would warn everyone I know not to order from them. I told them that if they can't either resend my order, without me having to place a new order myself and pay for shipping twice, or refund me for the shipping on the order I never received, I would call up Visa and have them cancel the transaction. Now to wait for their response.
Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together.
As someone in this thread correctly pointed out, Hanukkah has been celebrated since 165 B.C.E. when the events took place. As is customary in Jewish holidays celebrating happy events like this, there are "fun" customs. For example, in the case of "Purim" (where Jews celebrate liberation from a tyrant in Persia who wanted to kill all Jews - it's the story of the bible book "Esther"), they celebrate this happy occation by dressing up in costumes and getting drunk.
To celebrate Hanukkah, it was always traditional for parents to give their children a few coins as a gift at this time of year to celebrate the "miracle" that jews believe occured in 165 B.C.E. You may have seen these chocolate coins sold at this time of year. They are often given to kids as a fun substitute for coins.
Anyway, Christmas occurs at the same time as Hanukkah, and the gift-giving idea evolved from judaism's coin-giving. This gift-giving was "re-borrowed" back by jews, so now everyone gives gifts.
Releasing your company's flagship title/game during October-December of 2004 is utter idiocy. Games are art, and they also technology, but they are mostly entertainment, which means that they Are A Business. Part of business is marketing. Making a decision to release a game to compete with Half-Life 2 or Halo 2 or MGS3 or GTA:SA is pretty stupid. If you look at movie studios, they are very smart about releasing their entertainment so as to not compete against the big heavy hitters (Star Wars, Matrix, Spiderman franchises). Each Tuesday, there are about 40-50 major DVD releases. The week Spider-man 2 came out, there were a total of only 17 releases.
If I were a smallish studio I would not be releasing our flagship game between October and November. I'd wait until December or before October, or try in the spring. If they consciously attempt to release it in November, they only have themselves to blame.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.