Well with the Holiday shopping season in full effect, I figured "Why not have a retail musings thread".  For those who don't know, retail musings are what you see in local stores and what's selling.  Since this is a video-game sales site, it pertains to what game sales you see at your local Wal-marts, Game Stops, Game Crazies, Best Buys, Circuit Cities, Targets, and the like.  Of course all of this is anecdotal evidence, but it may help provide some insight into buying trends and such.  The format usually follows:

Store:

Location:  City, State

Date:  Day

Musings:  Console X was in ample supply, Console Y was sold out, Game Z wasn't touched, etc.  Doesn't have to be hard numbers, just some rough estimates of what you thought you saw, or even behavior at the store.

So here's mine.

Wal-Mart

Delaware

November 29

Was only here for a few, but the electronics section was booming.  And there were at least twenty people crowded around the Wii section.  The shame was that so much shovelware was being bought.  Surprisingly, Wii Fits and MK Wii were in stock.  The console was in stock too.  The 360 section was normal.  All consoles were in stock.  As was the PS3 section.  There weren't any copies of LBP in though, or Motorstorm: Pacific Rift.  Which could be a good or bad thing, as I didn't ask an associate.  360 games were moving briskly though.  CoD: WaW is going to be a nice holiday 360 seller.  And I even saw a copy of Lips being sold.  That's about it.

PS3 sections in the downtown area of Toronto, are strange compared to wii and 360. For instance, if I wanted a ps3 game, it is better to ask the counter than actually look in the ps3 section, because the whole section is just a mess.

Store: HMV and Bestbuy

The mess is like this, some games are not in the right place, it might say resitance 2 but it is let say call of duty world at war. They have the same game in part A and part C, same price, same product. Some games are not even listed on the shelve but are really in the back, valkyria choronicles.

Expecting 3-6 inches of snow today so had to run out and get some snow gear for my son and other errands.

Store: Walmart

Location: Orland Park, IL

Date: Sunday November 30th

Musings: No 360's at all, 4 Wii's in the glass case, 4 PS3's in the glass case. Clerk said they have more Wii's and PS3's in the back.

Store: Target

Location: Orland Park, IL

Date: Sunday November 30th

Musings: 1 Xbox 360 Pro, 2 Wii's, and 4 PS3's (2 80GB and 2 160GB) in the glass cases. Clerk said they are all out of 360's after the 1 in the case. No more Wii's in the back and plenty of PS3's in the back.


Store: Costco

Location: Orland Park, IL

Date: Sunday November 30th

Musings: 360 and PS3 bundles available.

Taget

Los Angeles, CA

Nov 29

Well I went in looking for the 360 Pro deal w/60 GC but they were all out. They still had arcades in stock. The ps3 had a couple 160gb w/Uncharted and 80gb sitting in case. No wiis in case. Most games on sale were gone like Deca Sports, Boom Blox. There was still an amble amount of Halo 3, because I was tempted to buy it w/o acquiring the box but I relented. Lots of DeBlobs still there. PSP section looked well stocked. Can't really remember anything else but most games that had $20 sale tags (not older titles @20) were gone. Oh yes There was a mountain load of DS in stock. I mean like there were at least 20 in the case. I don't know if that just means they have an enormous amount of stock or it just wasn't selling.

The Best Buy in Germantown was doing brisk sales of Wii on Friday when I got there at 9, by the time I had left they had replenished the pile twice.

On Saturday at the Best Buy in Rockville they had only about a Dozen Wii's left but they were all in bundles

Date- Black Friday

Time- About 2 pm (important to know for Blackfriday seeing as most shopping is done before then)

Best Buy-

Wii- No Wiis. No WiiFit. No MKWii. No SSBB. Those were the only games I really checked, the Wii section is huge here however. It has an entire row both sides and then half of the next row. I would say that about 1/3 of that is bigger items, like GH, or the big box games (outdoor life). Most of the games section was sparce. There were alot of slots empty. Oh, ya also i could not find any of the regular AC games, they had about 6 with WiiSpeak.

360- They had a least 3 pallets of 360s lining the ailse behind the Games section. There was a pallet of Elites, Pros, and Arcades. With some arcade spinkled in here and there. The games section looked really picked through, not too many CoD to be found. I was shocked to see a crap load of Gears 2. I am guessing they must have gotten a massive shipment. I did not ask if there were anymore 360s in the back.

PS3- Seemed to be in full stock, games section looked fairly well stocked (still could tell sales were strong though). Really not to much to report here.

Ok I went to Walmart, Sears and Gamestop the same day, but Best Buy is the most interesting because games are not behind glass.

I did have conversation with a GS employee in the Mall on Saturday (day after BF)

It went kinda like this.

There was still a sign saying that wii were in stock so I asked him if they really were. He said yea. He said they still had a few. I asked him if they werent selling much then. He kinda laughed and said hell ya they are selling. He said the entire day on friday they were bringing Wiis from the back on Pallets and putting them behind the desk, he was not sure how many they sold but they went though 7-8 pallets.................... They still had 1/2 of one behind they desk and 1 full in the back.... which means they had stock piled 9-10 pallets for BF weekend. I do not know how much is in a pallet though. I am guessing 15-20 which means they had 140-200 wiis......... OMG yes. I do not know if it was just this gamestop or all they did this.

Maybe I'm wrong, but aren't pallets typically a huge wooden plank that needs to be moved by a forklift?

My musing of the week would be that the games store I usually frequent has a ridiculous amount of Guitar Hero Wii copies. It was the first time I saw a store piling boxes up to the ceiling (about 3-4 meters high).

They put them right in front of all the PC games which are almost inaccessible because of that.

"Tell your friends they have to buy 5 copies of GHWii each or the PC games will be lost FOREVER. Mwahahahaha!!!!"

 yes to an extent. There are different kinds. The ones at best buy are the wooden type. You can move them with a hand truck (aka a pallet jack). The smaller kind were used at GS. The bigger pallets hold like 40 wiis easily. The Ones at GS seemed like 15, maybe 20 max.