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Hardware Shortages Weaken Holiday Sales 26

Posted by Zonk from the not-so-much-with-the-forward-thinking dept.
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."
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Hardware Shortages Weaken Holiday Sales More

Hardware Shortages Weaken Holiday Sales

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  • Why don't you (Score:3, Informative)

    by News for nerds ( 448130 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @12:32PM (#11409004) Homepage
    buy a GameCube, with RE4.
  • Bullocks. There were plenty of Athlon 64's and Radeon x800s available.
  • Shortage is trying to find a Nvidia Geforce 6600GT AGP in any store. There are plenty of ps2 and xboxes to go around in comparison.

  • What about the PC? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by kaellinn18 ( 707759 )
    It looks like this article is only referring to console sales. What about the PC industry? One would think that it's sales increased, what with the release of WoW, EQ2, HL2, and Doom 3. Those are just the major one off the top of my head. I'm sure there are lots more.

  • I tried... (Score:3, Informative)

    by wickedj ( 652189 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @12:57PM (#11409299) Homepage
    to buy a new Xbox this Christmas just for Halo 2 but everywhere I went it was sold out, even used. I wasn't able to get one until January.

  • Reminds me of a rather funny story... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Mitaphane ( 96828 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @01:09PM (#11409417) Homepage
    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!"
    • I work part-time at Target. The funniest thing I heard all season: "I'm looking for a PSAdvanceBoxDS2." This really happened and the customer said it directly to me. She was stone-cold serious. Luckily, we were out of all of them so I didn't have to tell her what was wrong with her statement.
    • "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). "

      Holy shit, retail sales jobs suck, even if you're selling videogames? In fact, due to low margins and high competition, it actually sucks even more than usual retail jobs because you have to meet sales goals? No way!

      Sorting boxes is shippin

  • There's still a shortage (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Saige ( 53303 ) <evil.angela@gma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @01:31PM (#11409684) Journal
    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.
    • The shortage is not only on consoles.

      I was able to find a slim PS2 two weeks ago. Great, but I also needed a memory card (for both PS1 and PS2) if I were to save my games...

      It took me 9 days of shopping every day at EBgames, BestBuy, Toys'R'us, RadioShack, WalMart, Zellers and any other store that could remotely be associated with the idea of selling video game stuff before I could actually find a third party memory card somewhere.

      Even the third party providers are having trouble meeting demand even week
  • i still cant get a ds online or in stores.

    the onyl ones ive come across are bundled with useless accessories and 5 games.

    how can they supply the upcoming Aus/NZ launch if they still cant supply N.A.?
  • I got an XBox for Christmas, apparently one of the last ones they had. Unfortunately it died 3 days after opening it! After calling countless stores repleatedly for 3 weeks, I finally got one of the two XBoxen in stock at Circuit City last Thursday.

  • More info (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Bloomy ( 714535 )
    Gamerfeed has a report [gamerfeed.com] stating that the industry had over $9.9 billion in revenues in 2004, compared to $10 billion in 2003. And that while revenues were down, "total industry unit sales were up 4 percent over the same period last year."

    Also, a New York Times article [nytimes.com] (mirror [iht.com]) says PC games are not included in the current numbers. They will be available "in the next few days."

  • I know there's supposedly a shortage of the PStwo, but every time I check online, they always say "ships in 1-2 days". So, is the 'shortage' just at the retail brick-and-mortar store level, are Amazon's estimated ship dates total fiction, or what ?

    I've seen reports [the-nextlevel.com] that the PStwo shortages were either almost only at EB Games, or were otherwise just shortages at individual brick-and-mortar stores, not widespread shortages. A lot of folks seem to think it's just a phony shortage to create hype around the PSt

    • Its a real shortage. I checked eight stores over the holidays (only 2 eb's) in four different states (visited parents) and each one of them did not have the slim ps2's or used ps2's. I havent checked recently, but I would expect that not much has changed.


      The official statement from Sony was that the holiday demand "exceded their expectations" and was "tough to calculate".

  • Why do sales aways have to be better than last year?

    Yes its nice if it is, but sometime you just peak out and cant do any better, or maybe its a baner year.

    When these copanys complain about sales, saying they are down for X amount of time they are going off of last year or projections. Then when some overhyped game does not do as well they blame it on priates or shortages and dont look at the real causes.

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