Best Buy Sees Video Games Sales Decline

Officials from U.S. electronics chain Best Buy have revealed details of the company’s fiscal fourth quarter and full year results, showing notable growth, but issues with the video game sector of its business. In the fourth quarter, revenues rose 9 percent to $9.2 billion, with digital TVs, MP3 players, notebook computers, digital cameras, DVDs and appliances cited as the fastest growing product lines. For the 2005 fiscal year, total revenue rose 12 percent to $27.4 billion, reflecting the opening of new stores and a comparable store sales gain of 4.3 percent. However, comparable store sales of video games software and hardware declined by “high single digits”, reflecting hardware shortages and what Best Buy describes as “softness in video game software related to the current product lifecycle". Nonetheless, the entertainment software product group, including video games, CD and DVD, represented 23 percent of the company's revenue mix in the fourth quarter. In the next fiscal year the company intends to expand its digital entertainment offerings, while in the game market, it expects to benefit from the launch of the PSP in the spring and the launch of the Xbox 2, which the fiscal report describes, apparently without any sense of secrecy, as being “next winter”.