Anyone who knows much about me knows that I used to run the video game rental business for Hollywood Video nationwide.  I'll say this outright, when it comes to the niche of understanding video game rental as a business, I'm probably one of the few people you could call for advice.  Old habits die hard so today I found myself wandering in to a Hollywood video store out of morbid curiousity as to what they were merchandising lately. 

 

I found 10 bays dedicated to Xbox 360, 6 bays dedicated to wii, and 2 bays dedicated to PS3.  Doesn't that tell you all you need to know right there?  PS3 is in a deep deep hole.  Even the 2 bays of PS3 that I saw had both their bottom rows blocked off because they didn't have enough inventory to fill it up completely.  It was sad really.

 

The store was also clearly in the middle of selling off nearly half of its PS2, Xbox, and Gamecube inventory as used.  Pricing was a mess and all over the place.

 

The accessories endcap business I started was still up and apparently going fine judging from the stock-out situation among those nine high-turning skus.

 

At a quick glance it appears that THQ, Take-Two, and Midway are all rev-sharing.  EA still doesn't seem to be.  It's too bad, clearly titles like Smarty-Pants or Boogie need to be rev-shared at rental if they even want to dream about selling it eventually at Walmart.  Can't remember seeing much evidence of Ubi and Activision though I would expect that they would be rev-sharing today - their smart enough and have the right product.  Predictably didn't see any Japanese publishers rev-sharing - intellectually too hard for them to grasp the argument (no offense guys but when it comes to rental, the Japanese companies do not approach it from a logical place).

 

On another note went to both Fred Meyer's and Target today looking for my charity santa present and once again dropped by the video game section to see if Scene-it: Lights, Camera, Action was available.  Sure enough, sold out in both stores.  So far the only place I have ever found the game in stock is EB Gamestop and even there it was selling.  Awesomeness.  Another game I highly recommend for playing with your younger kids - Viva Pinata Party Animals.  Heck of a lot of fun (not to mention easy achievements).