Three weeks folks til Black Friday, which is the biggest or second biggest shopping day in the US.
Keep your eyes open for major promotions, and put them in the thread. Will try to put an article up when everything is out. We usually get info from the big three about Black Friday too.
Couple factors heading into Black Friday this year before any deals are known:
- Kinect is not supply constrained at all in the US, it's slowed quite a bit and stock should still be plentiful
- Wii & PS3 are $50 cheaper than last year before any deals kick in.
- 3DS should do well - new Mario, price cut, first Christmas
- Wii will be entering Black Friday fresh off Zelda, Zumba 2, Mario & Sonic 2012, and Rayman Origins...plus whatever hardware discounts come. DKC only did 500k week one last year in the Americas, Zelda should be a much bigger push and comes around a week before BF. Wii has been $125-$135 sporadically in the past half year, but has never really been lower than that ever - look for deals around $100. It's also possible Wii will see most of the Spring price cut impact over Christmas ala 2009 (the 2009 price cut did gangbusters in Oct-Dec and then faded pretty quickly - 2011 cut did little in spring, might do more over Oct-Dec).
- Most major X360 games will be out way ahead of Black Friday, but the new Assassin's Creed is Nov 15, as is Rayman Origins, about 10 days before BF. Disneyland Kinect is Nov 15 too. Modern Warfare is Nov 8, and so will already be 'quieting down' (relatively speaking) by the end of November. X360 w/ Kinect bundles have been getting giftcards with purchase (free) for 6 months now - so that bundle will need to be under $250 to drive a lot of hardware.
- PS3 is basically the same as the X360 schedule for late November - pretty minimal actually with everything out by Nov 15. No Kinect games though. The PS3 has never been under $250 even with giftcards, so any promotions to $200 or less should be pretty big lifts.
- DS could also lift quite a bit if DS Lite / DSi / DSi XL get further cuts from the recent changes.
People are difficult to govern because they have too much knowledge.
When there are more laws, there are more criminals.
- Lao Tzu
