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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.
His plumbing job was outsourced to India.
Mario was a construction worker in the NES game Wrecking Crew. Given that Mario has done way more than just his plumbing of late (cart driver, golfer, tennis player, etc.), is it right to still pigeon hole him as a plumber?
The only thing I hate more than hypocrites are people who hate hypocrites.
This holiday season seems to have an abundance of good games being released: HL2, WOW, Metroid 2, Pirates!, KOTOR2, etc.
IMO that's the reason for the increased sales.......
CMDRTACO CHECK YOUR EMAIL!
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.
Back then he was just Jumpman.
And he was labeled a "workman", so why not go ahead an call him a construction worker?
How many of us buy games at wal-mart? How many of us avoid wal-mart at all costs?
Or just use NYTSlashdot/NYTSlashdot as your username/password, you do have to log in, but then you don't have to sell your soul.
Note to self: Stop putting jokes in my insightful comments so I can get something other than +1 Funny!
I'll conceed he was originally a construction worker.
/ / / / / / / /
However, in my defense:
Yo, yo!
It's the Mario Brothers
And plumbin's their game
Found the secret warp zone
While working on the drain
Lend the princess a hand
In the Mushroom Land
Comin' atcha with the plumbers
You'll be hooked on the brothers!"
We do that to avoid offending Jews, Muslims, atheists, and other non-Christians.
Inspired by an episode of the TV show "The OC," you can even buy Chrismukkah cards to celebrate a more interfaith holiday than plain old Christmas or Chanukah.
For more information, click here.
Right.
Rip-offs.
Like Hanukkah.
Which celebrates events that took place in 165 B.C.E.
Rip-offs.
--AC
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.
With respects to Half Life 2, perhaps it is the combination of being a highly anticipated game as well as the difficulty of pirating the game thanks to the infernal 'Steam'.
Steam indirectly aiding Walmart?
"There's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all."
- Bob Dylan
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
Sure, game retailers are all seeing big profits, but the people in the games industry that might be seeing less-than-average profits this year are the video game companies that are not Microsoft, Nintendo, Konami, Rockstar, Valve, or Blizzard- ie anyone who is not releasing one of the HUGE titles this season. Joe Average Buyer will be more drawn to the games that have been receiving ridiculous amounts of hype than the ones that haven't (but are still just as worthy of a buy.)
Actually, Christ himself asked his followers to celebrate his death, not his life.
Thusly, Christmas shouldn't even be religiously observed. Easter is the ultimate holiday in Christianity.
I believe the parent was referring to Hanukkah as a rip-off holiday because it has become a reason to buy and give gifts for Jews, since they didn't want to celebrate Christmas.
If he wasn't referring to their similarity in rampant consumerism, he's just a dumbass.
Because it is easier than saying Chrismahanukwanzakah (props to Virgin mobile for this rather amusing ad campaign).
Q.
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.
Don't forget Festivus!
I've already got my aluminum pole out...
This is a sig. Deal with it.
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.