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.

Comments

Wrecking Crew

[EddieBurkett]

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?

Re:Wrecking Crew

[Monthenor]

On top of that, Mario was originally (circa Donkey Kong) concepted as a carpenter. It wasn't until Mario Bros/Super Mario Bros that the plumber image took hold.

The article writer is obviously too old-school for Zonk ;)

Re:Wrecking Crew

[aster_ken]

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.

Re:Wrecking Crew

[iocat]

Given his variety of roles -- plumber (most games he's in), construction worker (the deeply underrated Wrecking Crew), general man-about-the-construction-site (Donkey Kong) -- maybe it would have been better to refer to him as a general contractor...

okay, okay....

[Zonk]

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!"

Skewed data

[SilentJ_PDX]

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.

It's the cost of fuel

[LordNimon]

I read an article about this somewhere, but unfortunately I can't quote it now. The vast majority of Wal-mart customers are low-income. They spend all of their income on day-to-day expenses, with very little left over for "luxury" purchases. The price of fuel is really hurting them, apparently. When fuel gets more expensive, it directly affects their bottom line. And because a large chunk of their purchases come from Walmart, there's a direct connection.

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.

Re:It's the cost of fuel

[Marc_Hawke]

My sister is the manager of the electronics department of the local WalMart. I showed her this headline (neither one of us RTFA'd.)

Anyway...she says that video games are doing really well at her Walmart, however, electronics in general are doing poorly. So, even though the videogames are up, the overall department is down.

She believes there are two reasons for the down-trend.

One, there isn't any new technology in the lower price ranges. You have the same old DVD players and CTR TV's that you had last year. Everyone already has one, or two, or enough.

Two, there IS new technology in the heavy spender ranges. Flat Panel and HDTV sets are on the virge. Also, DVD recorders are the 'big thing.' Both of those technologies are too expensive for your typical Wal-mart shoppers.

So...people already have the current stuff, and they are willing to 'live with it' until the new stuff comes down in price a little bit. We're in the lull between technologies.

(I don't know about you, but as a computer shopper I'm noticing the same thing. I'm holding off on buying my new system because I'm waiting for the next architecture to stabilize. I'm talking about 64-bit, PCI-E, SATA, etc. You can get all of them now, but "soon"(tm) they'll have the killer chipsets and drivers and addons etc, and I can buy my next PC. Besides. the one I have now plays Doom3 and HL2 with good details and a decent rate. I can wait.)

And that is the problem with this years Wal-Mart electronics. The games (EB's only ware) aren't the culprit.

Not playstation.com, I hope.

[mh101]

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.