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News Stories > Holiday Sales Info
by Frictionless Insight Several major retailers have reported on holiday sales. While some retailers reported poor game sales, that problem appears specific to individual companies, and game sales overall seemed robust. Generally, software sales were up. Hardware sales (consoles) weren't, but that's to be expected at this stage in the console cycle. Interestingly, while other companies lauded game sales, Circuit City and Toys "R" Us blamed decreased game sales, in part, for their performance. GameStop Says Game Sales Up, Hardware Sales Better Than Expected GameStop reported that total sales for the nine-week period ended January 3, 2004 totaled $508.6 million, a 21% increase from the prior year's holiday sales of $420.4 million. To exclude the effect of new stores on sales figures, GameStop noted that comparable store sales increased 4.9%. Video game software sales increased 29%. They also noted that sales of consoles and handhelds were above expectations, but they were probably expecting those sales to be considerably below the previous year's totals. Electronics Boutique Agrees With GameStop Electronics Boutique Holdings Corp. announced that total sales for the nine-week period ended January 3, 2004 were $544.4 million, 24.4% higher than the $437.6 million in sales in the same period last year. Comparable store sales only increased 2.5%. Similar to GameStop, Electronics Boutique noted that software sales were strong and hardware sales were better than expected. Toys "R" Us Says Game Sales Down During the nine-week period ended January 3, 2004, Toys "R" Us has sales of $4.42 billion compared to $4.38 billion in the nine-week period ended January 4, 2003. The 0.9% increase was largely due to favorable currency exchange rates related to international sales. Excluding that impact Toys "R" Us noted sales would have decreased 2.7%. When it comes to games, the company said that "weakness in the video game business had a significant negative effect on our overall results." Circuit City Sees Weak Game and Hardware Sales Circuit City announced that total sales for December 2003 were $1.71 billion, down 1% from the $1.74 billion in sales during December 2002. Comparable stores suffered a decline of 2%. While Circuit City saw sales growth in DVD movies as well as LCD and plasma televisions, weak sales in video game hardware and software was partly responsible for offsetting this sales increase. Best Buy Sees Game Sales Increase Best Buy announced that revenues for the fiscal month ended January 3, 2003 were $4.64 billion, a 19% increase over the $3.89 billion for the fiscal month ended January 4, 2004. Best Buy reported that video game sales increased on a year-over-year basis. Hollywood Video Says Game Sales Countered Weak Movie Rentals Hollywood Video has lowered its fourth-quarter and 2003 profit estimates due to weak rental revenues. It is interesting to note the company stated "A jump in sales of video games and game consoles at Hollywood's Game Crazy outlets helped offset a decline in movie-rental revenue, pushing up Hollywood's fourth-quarter sales 12 percent at stores open at least one year. But the company more than doubled its advertising spending to get those increased sales, eating up profits."
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