So I went to two Best Buys this weekend, one week after Black Friday. My observations:
1. From the time I walked through the front doors until the time I paid for my stuff, there were ALWAYS stacks of PS3s somewhere close by. As I walked back to the game section to pick up a copy of Tomb Raider: Underworld, there were pallets of PS3s lining the aisle the whole way. On my right, there were PS3s in front of all the HDTVs. At the customer service desk, there were PS3s stacked all the way around to the Geek Squad desk. This is how both Best Buys I visited had things set up. They were both, of course, all out of Wiis. One of them had 9 360 Pros, 1 Elite, and no arcades. One of them had about 10 360s total, I don't remember what the ratio of models was.
2. At the first Best Buy I went to, there was a 360 kiosk for the new Madden as well as for Guitar Hero: World Tour. I don't know what the PS3 kiosk was supposed to be displaying, because there was a bunch of scrambled up stuff on the screen. The PS3 had either locked up or was just flat out broken. Just thought that was a bit ironic. Though I do realize those display consoles are put through pure hell during this time of year.
3. The software aisles: When I went over to look for my game in the 360 aisle, I couldn't get in. The entire aisle was packed full of people buying games, controllers, XBL cards, etc. I literally had to stand there and wait. Eventually an employee came over and just went back to the backstock to get me a copy of the game I wanted. I never did set foot in the 360 aisle, though they actually had wire racks full of 360 games on the two ends of the aisle. The Wii aisle was more or less the same situation. The Sony aisle was not. There were tons of people looking for PS2 games at the end of the aisle. The PS3 software section was a ghost town. I checked back there two or three more times during my whole visit in the store, and I only saw one person looking at PS3 games. And I think we all know how many people were looking for PSP games.
99% of my observations are from the first Best Buy I went to. I just mention the second one because I happened to notice that they had the PS3 marketed exactly the same way as the first store. Just in case you're wondering, I did ask employees about their inventory situations at both stores, just because I'm a nerd like that. The verdict: the Best Buys I visited are sitting on TONS of PS3s, very few 360s, and zero Wiis. I know this is kind of a "duh" thread because we already knew this was going on, but reading about it online is one thing, actually witnessing it in action is quite another. I can't believe what sad shape the PS3 is in this holiday season.
