Hardware Shortages Weaken Holiday Sales

GamesIndustry.biz is reporting that GTA: San Andreas was the tops in December sales, but overall 2004 sales were somewhat down because of PS2 and Xbox hardware shortages. From the article: "That leaves the industry on negative growth of one per cent for the calendar year, and even considering software alone, December still saw negative growth of five per cent and brought the calendar year growth figure down to seven per cent."

Comments

Reminds me of a rather funny story...

[Mitaphane]

This holiday break one my friends had a temp position working at Gamestop. From the stories he told me it sounded like it was hell(stand around sort boxes, shitty pay, people that don't know what they're looking for, management that treated them like shit and treated their own employees more like potential theives than their customers). Anyway, his big annoyance at the job was there was a little number of PSTwo's(or whatever you call the newer slim version of the PS2) and people kept asking them if they had any in stock. Every few minutes they get a call from someone asking if they had them in stock. And despite my friend trying give friendly advice(go order online, suggesting other stores) people still got upset as if the store was suppose to have an unlimited number of PS2's.

It got to the point where people calling for PS2's became a joke itself. He even started calling(and getting his friends to call too) the store asking questions not unlike what the real customers asked:

"Gamestop. Dude Speaking"
"Do you have any PS2's?"
"No we do not."
"Well, could you just make me one before I come in?"
"No, we do not make the PS2's, only sell them."
"You're sure you don't have any PS2's in the back?"

"Gamestop. Dude Speaking"
(big southern drawl) "You have any of 'em Zeeee-boxes?"
"Um, you mean X-Box, sir?"
"NO, NO, *Zeeee*-Box. Like Zebra"

"Gamestop. Dude Speaking"
(irate father voice)"Are you guys taking preorders for the PSP2?"
"You mean PSP, sir?"
"No it's a PS....shut up! I'm trying to asking the man about it!"

There's still a shortage

[Saige]

There is still a shortage.

I tried, last Friday (2 1/2 weeks after the holidays) to try an buy an XBox. Everywhere I checked, not only did they not have any in, they hadn't had any for almost a month, and had no clue when they were going to get more.

I ended up looking around online, and finally found a place that had XBox + DVD player bundles for sale. That was all I could find. Though to be honest, I didn't go to the level of checking eBay or looking at random little web shops.