January 8th, 2009

GameStop Number 22

I know it may sound strange, but GameStop number 22 is one topic worth of our attention. What about this GameStop number? Well, it's very easy - we're talking about the holiday sales growth! Yes, in these hard times, while some retail chains are closing down, others see their numbers grow. Nothing really out of ordinary, after all... if it wasn't this crisis, of course.

The amazing 22.3 percent sales increase was powered by performance of various games, mainly coming from Activision, Microsoft and Nintendo. Additional GameStop numbers look like this - between November 2 and the 3rd day of January, total sales were up to USD 2.86 billion, compared to USD 2.33 billion in the same period of 2007-2008. Even more, comparable store sales got up 10.2 percent.

The top 5 sellers were these - Activision's Call of Duty: World at War, Guitar Hero World Tour and World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, followed by Microsoft's Gears of War 2 and, finally, Nintendo's hit wonder Wii Fit.

According to Dan DeMatteo, GameStop's CEO, "As expected, the consumer saw great entertainment value in videogames in one of the most challenging holiday shopping seasons ever. In fact, in the midst of a serious recession, our average transaction was higher this year than last. In addition, our proprietary inventory management systems allowed us to maintain a great in-stock position during the busiest season we have ever experienced."

All this proves that I was wrong - when the economy is going down and you people get to spend more time at home than usual, that's good for the gaming industry... although I don't think next year we'll see the same scenario, but that remains to be seen. After all, there's a full year ahead waiting for us to game through.