July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

In the battle between made-up consumer holidays, it looks like Black Friday still reigns supreme on mobile devices.

When it comes to increases in usage, mobile apps from Amazon, Newegg, and Gilt all saw significantly higher gains on Black Friday compared to Cyber Monday, according to data compiled by the mobile data compression company Onavo.

The findings throw some water on the hype from eBay and Paypal, which were trying to make the term “Mobile Monday” replace Cyber Monday given the performance on their apps. Onavo’s data, which is compiled anonymously from more than 100,000 US iPhone owners running the company’s compression app, shows that eBay’s mobile app did see a rise on Cyber Monday — but for other popular shopping apps, that was far from the case.

For example, Amazon saw a 222 percent increase in app usage on Black Friday, compared to a 171 percent bump on Cyber Monday. And Gilt saw a massive increase of 185 percent last Friday, compared to 87 percent on Monday.

No matter what you think of annoying shopping holidays, it’s hard to deny the increasing importance of mobile shopping for online retailers.

But there’s a dirty little secret that mobile commerce has been keeping. It’s slow — deadly slow.

Site monitoring and testing company Keynote tracks the speed and reliability of top U.S. e-commerce sites, and over the weekend things slowed down dramatically. Especially today, on Cyber Monday.

“The average page load time for a mobile retail site … on Cyber Monday is now slower than 18 seconds, or roughly twice as slow as normal,” Aaron Rudger, a mobile manager at Keynote, said in a statement.

Source: Keynote

Fastest mobile sites

That’s almost nine times slower than the average time on top e-commerce companies’ desktop sites: 2.27 seconds. And it’s an eternity while you’re standing there staring at your tiny screen. It’s something I’ve noticed personally even when it’s not Black Friday or Cyber Monday, and even when using fast LTE networks with an iPhone 5 or a Google/Samsung Nexus.

But there’s mobile, and there’s mobile.

Of that 16.3 percent of Black Friday commerce that came in over mobile, the lion’s share — 10 of those 16 percentage points — were purchases made on iPads. Only about a quarter of iPads are sold with cellular connectivity — most are Wi-Fi models. And only a very small fraction, about six percent, of iPad browsing sessions come over cellular networks.

All of which means that iPad numbers are very different from what we typically imagine when we think of “mobile commerce.” iPad-facilitated traffic and sales data gets lumped in with smartphones under the big tent of “mobile,” but the tablet experience of a large screen, beefy processor, and fast local Wi-Fi is very different from a tiny screen, over sometimes-jammed cellular networks, and a generally slower processor.

What that means is: mobile shopping on a phone isn’t exactly the best — or speediest — experience.

“This is quite detrimental and will certainly impact a customer’s experience negatively and can easily motivate a shopper to abandon a site altogether or go to a competitor’s mobile shopping site,” Rudger said.

The solution, according to Keynote, is better sites and better testing, especially testing under load.

Source: Keynote

Slowest mobile sites

photo credit: Michael W. May via photopin cc

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Amazon’s line of Kindle readers are undoubtedly popular among consumers this holiday season, but it’s difficult to determine exactly how many have sold.

Today the company released new information about Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales data that vaguely indicate that Kindles are selling well — without actually stating any hard sales numbers.

For instance, Amazon stated that Cyber Monday was “the biggest day ever for Kindle sales worldwide” and “Kindle Fire HD is the most gifted and most wished for product on Amazon worldwide since launch.” (See the full list of “milestones” below.)

It’s really hard to tell whether Amazon is actually breaking sales records with its refreshed line of Kindles, or if the company is once again playing cheerleader for its own products as a way to avoid disclosing possibly lackluster results. Unlike last year, Amazon doesn’t have the benefit of selling its Kindle devices inside two of the largest physical retailers, Walmart and Target.

Amazon was a little more forthcoming with sales data last holiday season, and released enough data that suggested it sold about 5 million Kindle Fires. Yet overall, Amazon has been notoriously vague about its Kindle sales.

It’ll be interesting to see how shareholders will react if Amazon once again decides to stay silent about Kindle sales (broken down by tablets and e-readers), digital sales, and digital sales through Kindle devices.

Amazon’s Kindle “milestones”:

• Cyber Monday 2012 was the biggest day ever for Kindle sales worldwide.
• The top 4 spots on the worldwide Amazon best sellers list since launch nearly three months ago are Kindle e-readers and Kindle Fires.
• To celebrate Cyber Monday, Amazon.com offered a special deal—just $129 for the Kindle Fire. Customers flocked to the deal, making this the biggest Cyber Monday deal ever for Amazon.com.
• Kindle Fire HD is the most gifted and most wished for product on Amazon worldwide since launch.
• 9 out of the top 10 best-selling products on Amazon worldwide since 9/6 are Kindles, Kindle accessories and digital content.

Photo by Jennifer Van Grove/VentureBeat

Facebook today shared data about the social networking activities of its U.S. members on Black Friday. The official information tells us nothing about the online or offline purchasing behaviors of Facebook’s massive audience, while third-party calculations make it seem like the social network played a non-existent role in driving traffic or sales.

On Black Friday, Facebook said that people were talking most about retailers’ Pages — Walmart, Toys “R” Us, Macy’s, and Amazon in particular. There were 252,023 unique users talking about Walmart, 223,551 people discussing Toys “R” Us, 158,062 folks chatting about Macy’s, and 108,339 individuals conversing about Amazon on Black Friday, a Facebook spokesperson told VentureBeat.

Mentions of “Black Friday,” “Shopping,” “Mall,” and “Sales,” also spiked exponentially among U.S. users. The revelations are akin to saying people ate a lot of turkey and pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving Day.

The social network measures the number of unique users who create a story about a Page in a seven-day period to calculate a “People Talking About This” ranking (PTAT). For the week ending on Black Friday, the top 25 PTAT-ranked Pages were all retailer Pages, as listed below.

What can we make of the list? Simply that retailer Pages were the most popular variety of Pages (shocker, I know), and that Walmart did a better job than anyone else at getting Facebook members in the U.S. to talk about its Page.

Facebook did not share the correlation between its PTAT calculations and online sales or store traffic. This strikes me as a mistake.

Black Friday was part of a record-breaking holiday shopping weekend. According to the National Retail Foundation, about 89 million Americans visited brick-and-mortar stores on Black Friday alone. The entire weekend, save for Cyber Monday, brought in about $60 billion in sales, with the average person spending about 40 percent of his or her total bill online.

A report from IBM said that Black Friday online sales were up 20.7 percent from last year. ComScore pegged e-commerce spending on Black Friday at $1.042 billion, making the pseudo holiday the heaviest online spending day of the year.

By golly, you’d certainly expect Facebook, which connects consumers to the brands they love, to have facilitated some of those transactions. But instead of any proclamation from Facebook about being a platform that contributed in a meaningful way to a record-breaking day, we get some fuzzy findings about the Pages people were talking about. Whoopee.

Talk is cheap. IBM’s Digital Analytics Benchmark report concluded this: “Shoppers referred from Social Networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube generated 0.34 percent of all online sales on Black Friday, a decrease of more than 35 percent from 2011.”

Let me reiterate the finding: Only around one-third of a percent of Black Friday online sales can be directly linked back to any social service. Out of all online sessions on Black Friday, Facebook specifically accounted for 0.68 percent of referral traffic, according to IBM. Twitter meanwhile accounted for zero percent of referral traffic.

I suspect IBM’s calculations are far more bleak than reality, especially as click-throughs don’t always correlate to immediate conversions. Facebook, as we know, believes that impressions, even those that don’t drive a direct purchase, add up to value, hence the new ad-tracking tools for marketers.

Still, I’m left wondering how much of a role, if any, Facebook, Twitter, or any other social network played in driving purchases or changing consumer behavior on Black Friday. So far, it sounds like the networks spawned a lot of talk but no action.

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Top 25 PTAT for Black Friday 2012
People Talking About This (PTAT) is the number of unique users who have created a “story” about a page in a seven-day period. Stories are items that display in news feed, created by users when they like a Page, post on the Page wall, like a post, comment on a post, share a post, etc.

1. Walmart
2. Toys “R” Us
3. Macy’s
4. Amazon
5. Converse
6. Foot Locker
7. Spencer’s
8. Aeropostale
9. Target
10. Kohl’s
11. Coach
12. Champs Sports
13. Best Buy
14. Finish Line
15. Ace Hardware
16. Keurig
17. Forever 21
18. Lowe’s Home Improvement
19. Gap
20. JCPenney
21. Bed Bath & Beyond
22. Sears
23. QVC
24. Build-A-Bear Workshop
25. Disney Store

Photo credit: heather/Flickr

Pinterest blocked traffic from Amazon and other websites on Black Friday last week, according to Pinfluencer, a Pinterest analytics service. Socialtimes reported today that extra holiday traffic — and suspected malicious activity — prompted Pinterest to refuse queries from the sites.

Update 9:38PM — Pinterest PR gave me the following statement:

During the holidays, we believe a third party was using Amazon Web Services to scrape our site so we temporarily blocked a specific traffic source, which is a common measure taken by web services. Some legitimate services may have been affected momentarily, but we do not believe that traffic to or from Amazon.com or other Amazon properties was impacted. 

Pinterest drives massive referral traffic that can drive impressive sales for online retailers. And though its growth has slowed in 2012, and the site is virtually ignored by small and medium-sized businesses, it is still on track to be the fourth-largest source of referral traffic on the web.

Amazon added Pinterest buttons to its website earlier this year (although it can be a massive where’s-Waldo exercise to find the social sharing buttons on Amazon’s busy pages). Presumably so many product pages were being viewed and shared by shoppers, Pinterest’s automated danger signals were activated.

The blockage lasted for 15.5 hours, from 11:30 PM on November 23th to 3PM on November 24th. Since Pinfluencer tracks pins, repins, likes, and comments, its services were affected as well.

I’ve contacted both Pinfluencer and Pinterest for more details, and will update this post as those companies respond.

photo credit: Thomas Hawk via photopin cc

That’s a new record, the NRF said, and 28 percent of those weekend shoppers were at stores by midnight on Black Friday.

The numbers are up from last year’s figures (226 million people spending $398 each last year), and includes 89 million shoppers on Black Friday alone. They also may blow earlier predictions of $32 billion in sales on Black Friday and Cyber Monday out of the water, although Monday sales, of course, are not yet included in these figures.

Close to half the amount spent — 40.7 percent, or $170.42 — was spent online. That’s also up from 37.8 percent last year. Half of all Black Friday shoppers did at least some shopping online.

“There’s no question that millions of people were drawn to retailers’ aggressive online promotions this weekend, making sure to research and compare prices days in advance to ensure they were getting the best deal they could,” said Pam Goodfellow, BigInsight’s consumer insights director. BigInsight conducted the poll of 4005 consumers, on which the numbers are based, for the NRF.

It may indeed be better to give than to receive, but not everyone was shopping for Christmas gifts.

In fact, 80 percent of shoppers bought non-gift items, with 60 percent buying clothes and accessories. Popular gifts included toys, media, electronics, and jewelry.

Unfortunately, when there are great deals and lots of people, some have trouble keeping it classy:

photo credit: Michael Holden via photopin cc

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Fresh Black Friday data from e-commerce juggernaut eBay and payments specialist PayPal highlights this year’s holiday shopping theme: the mall of America is in your pocket.

The online services, both still basking in the joy of remarkable Thanksgiving Day mobile numbers, reported today that Black Friday transactions and payments via mobile devices were better than ever.

EBay tallied 153 percent more mobile transactions this year than it did on Black Friday in 2011. PayPal spiked even higher with mobile owners. Black Friday 2012 brought about a 193 percent increase to PayPal mobile payments over the previous year.

Mobile denizens got the most spend-happy in the mid-day hours. Just as was the case on Thanksgiving Day, the most popular time to shop via mobile on Black Friday was between 12:00 and 1:00 p.m. Pacific, according to PayPal.

Obviously, the shopper-friendly services weren’t the only ones enjoying a boost of mobile traffic on Black Friday. According to IBM’s analysis, Black Friday online sales were up 20.7 percent from last year with 16.3 percent of sales coming from mobile devices.

Mobile shopping photo via Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Holiday shoppers didn’t totally forgo long lines and early call times on Black Friday, but they did grab their smartphones and iPads to help them navigate to the best destinations, online or off.

Altogether, Black Friday online sales were up 20.7 percent from last year, a phenomena that was largely fueled by the mobile shopping masses.

Sales on mobile devices accounted for 16.3 percent of all online Black Friday sales, up from 9.8 percent in 2011, according to IBM and its cloud-based analytics initiative dubbed “Smarter Commerce.”

Nearly a quarter of U.S. consumers, or 24 percent, opted to visit retailers’ sites using their mobile devices. Most chose the iPad as their digital assistant of choice. Apple’s tablet device generated more traffic than any other single slate or smartphone, and accounted for close to 10 percent of all online shopping traffic, IBM found. Apple’s other popular totable device, the iPhone, was a close second at 8.7 percent.

IBM concluded that consumers used a multiscreen shopping strategy to get the best bargains, meaning they trekked to stores and simultaneously fired up their favorite mobile devices for a hybrid shopping experience. Overall, 58 percent of consumers used smartphones to look for Black Friday deals.

Mobile also totally annihilated social. Shoppers referred by social networks only accounted for .34 percent of all online sales on Black Friday. The figure marked a more than 35 percent drop off from 2011.

For more of IBM’s findings, check out the infographic below.

Photo credit: andrewarchy/Flickr

The National Retail Federation’s latest poll says 147 million shoppers is a slight decrease from the 152 million who shopped last year’s Black Friday, possibly due to this being the earliest Thanksgiving since 2007. But per-shopper spending looks to jump 25 percent, according to a Consumer Electronics Association poll, to $218.

“The 2012 Thanksgiving weekend has the potential to be the biggest shopping weekend on record [in the U.S.],” the CEA’s chief economist, Shawn DuBravac, said in a statement.

Sixty percent of U.S. adults — about 140 million Americans — plan to buy at least one Christmas gift this weekend, according to the Consumer Electronics Association. That one gift — plus whatever goodies we buy ourselves — will add up fast.

Multiply the 147 million American shoppers that NRF predicts may hit stores this weekend with the average per-shopper spend CEA is estimating, and you’ve got almost $32 billion in gifts and assorted goodies flying off both real and virtual shelves this weekend — $32,046,000,000, to be exact.

That would be a major increase from last year, which saw about $11.4 billion in Black Friday sales and $1.25 billion in Cyber Monday revenues. But it does cover the entire weekend: Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, and combines both offline and online sales.

According to new Nielsen poll, a lot of those gifts will be electronics, as kids are hoping for iPhones, iPads, and Nintendo Wii Us under the tree. The same is true of gifts Americans present to themselves, and adults’ wish lists are full of tablets, smartphones, and laptops.

According to the CEA a third of Americans will visit a bricks-and-mortar store, while another 20 percent will prefer to let their fingers do the walking, online.

But not all is sweetness and light.

As the U.S. government deals with an impending “fiscal cliff,” half of consumers surveyed by the CEA say they’re worried and that it will affect their spending — perhaps in anticipation of taxation increases in the new year. Eighteen percent said the fiscal cliff will have a “large impact” on their spending.

But perhaps not very large, if we’ll be spending $32 billion in four days this weekend.

photo credit: Michael Holden via photopin cc

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Last week Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba shocked the web with news that its subsidiaries Taobao (like a Chinese eBay) and T-mall (like Amazon) sold a massive $3.06 billion in product in a single 24-hour period.

Three billion dollars is almost triple the entire 2011 Black Friday sales of e-commerce sites in the United States, and this is a testament to both the growing maturity of the Chinese online market and the central position Alibaba holds in China.

So how do you do $3 billion in sales in a single day? I interviewed an Alibaba spokesperson, who preferred to remain unnamed, to find out.

Almost as many users as Twitter

First of all, it helps to have users — lots of them.

The two sites, Taobao.com and Tmall.com, share a combined user base of half a billion registered users. That’s only about 30 percent of the total Chinese population, which means that Alibaba has a long runway for continued growth as the Chinese middle class continues to grow — and suggesting that a $10 billion day is not out of the realm of possibility in years to come.

Some of the goods for sale on Taobao.

(It also means, by the way, that it might be crazy for Yahoo to sell its stake in Alibaba now. Yahoo still owns 23 percent of the Chinese e-commerce giant after pocketing $7.6 billion U.S from selling almost half its original stake. Down the road, however, it might be like owning a 23 percent of Google, or Facebook … times 10.)

Both Taobao.com and Tmall process payments via Alipay, Alibaba’s payments processor. Alipay has over 700 million user accounts, presumably all with credit card payment information, as of mid-2012.

A cultural sea change

When you’re looking to scale quickly, it helps to be a high-growth company in a high-growth industry in a high-growth country.

But while a huge number of users is necessary, it’s insufficient to generate such massive cash flow. Just as important is a change in Chinese consumer behavior toward e-commerce “increasingly becoming a primary shopping channel,” according to Alibaba. The entire industry has had double-digit growth year-over-year — since 2010 e-commerce in China has enjoyed an average 10 percent quarter to quarter growth rate — and Alibaba is outpacing the industry.

In addition to a general acceptance of e-commerce as perhaps the first option for shopping, Chinese consumers have been increasingly prone to spend big on “double sticks day,” 11/11. Also referred to as “singles’ day,” Nov. 11 has taken on a rough similarity to our Valentine’s Day. Singles try hard to not be single, couples celebrate that they are couples, and probably many more people are simply happy to dogpile any opportunity to shop big and save big, much like Black Friday in the U.S.

Stores galore

Users and demand are great, but you need supply. That is not a problem for Alibaba, as the representative said that Tmall hosts e-commerce operations for 50,000 companies, while Taobao manages online sales and payments and “several million,” most of whom are likely individuals buying and selling much as we see on eBay here.

Of those stores, 10,000 took part in the 11/11 festivities with special sales and promotions. That’s five times the number that participated just last year, which gave Chinese shoppers “access to an even wider range of products.”

Promotion helped too, Alibaba says:

“We also offered new functions, activities and games via the event landing page beginning mid-October and noticed that many online shoppers were visiting the site and browsing through participating stores and available products as well as adding products to their shopping carts.”

Let’s get technical

While I generally like to ask companies for technical details about their server setup, Alibaba was anxious not

to share too much information that might be construed as proprietary, saying only that Alibaba Cloud Computing manages all Taobao and Tmall’s infrastructure from three data centers in Beijing, Hangzhou and California.

It also preferred not to disclose what kind of servers it runs, including operating system and webserver details, but a quick search reveals that Alibaba uses Tengine for webserving, which is a 100 percent compatible fork from the increasingly popular Nginx server, and that Alibaba runs, as expected, on Linux.

Mobile buyers figured prominently in Alibaba’s monster day, with one in four Taobao users accessing the site from a smartphone or a tablet. That compares to one in six last year.

Summing up

A $3 billion day doesn’t happen all the time, even in the world’s most populous country. And it’s a huge proportion of Alibaba’s annual goal for Taobao and Tmall, which was one trillion RMB in 2012. That’s closing in on $15 billion U.S., which is serious money.

Given Alibaba’s trajectory and China’s growth, it would seem that a $4 billion or $5 billion day would not be out of the question in 2013.

photo credit: dcmaster via photopin cc, Autorun！ via photopin cc

Between Black Friday and Cyber Monday falls … Small Business Saturday.

Yes, that’s actually a thing now: Created (and trademarked) by American Express in 2011, “Small Business Saturday” is an attempt to encourage people to do their holiday shopping at small businesses. It’s set for the Saturday after Thanksgiving. So after you go on a mall-shopping binge on Friday (or perhaps after you stay home knitting in observation of Buy Nothing Day), head downtown on Saturday and buy some stuff from local merchants.

And to help out, Twitter is offering $1 million in free ads for small businesses. The first 10,000 eligible businesses in the U.S. will get $100 in free advertising credits each, which they can use for promoting tweets or for promoting their own Twitter accounts. Nice, huh? You don’t even have to claim the credits this weekend — Twitter will keep the offer open until December 14. Click over here to apply for the program.

It’s a sweet gesture from Twitter to the vast engine of economic growth that is made up of America’s small businesses. But it’s also a canny promotional ploy for Twitter to call attention to its own advertising services, isn’t it?

But, let’s not be too jaded about this. After all, we’re talking about an imaginary holiday invented by a credit card company, but at least it’s one that might benefit some actual mom-and-pop shops.

Now, who wants to start a campaign for Startup Sunday?

Photo credit: American Express/Small Business Saturday

Black Friday is the day in which we work off the gluttony of Thanksgiving by overindulging on consumer electronics.

If you’re struggling for something to be thankful for, I have an item for you right here. Be thankful that I’m putting together this list of gaming Black Friday deals to help you better survive the darkest of days at retail. Oh, and to anyone working retail on Nov. 23: Godspeed.

We’ll try to describe each deal thoroughly, but if you have any questions or extra details, let us know in the comments.

If we list a game, assume it is on sale across all of its available platforms (except for Wii U) unless otherwise noted.

Enough rambling, –to the deals and details:

When does each store open

• Amazon: The website is having deals now and all throughout Thursday and Friday. If you see a deal on this page you want to find on Amazon, click here for a calendar of when the promotion will run.
• GameStop: (Still hasn’t released its official Black Friday ad with store hours.)
• Walmart: Opens at 8 p.m. Thursday.
• Kmart: Opens at 8 p.m. Thursday
• Toys ‘R’ Us: Opens at 8 p.m. Thursday.
• Sears: Opens at 8 p.m. Thursday.
• Target: Opens at 9 p.m. Thursday.
• Shopko: Opens at 9 p.m. Thursday.
• Best Buy: Opens at midnight Friday.
• Radio Shack: Opens at 6 a.m.Friday.
• Sam’s Club: Opens at 7 a.m. Friday.

Xbox 360 hardware and bundles

• 250GB bundle with Black Ops II, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and Forza 4: $249.99 at GameStop
• 250GB bundle with Forza 4 and Skyrim: $199.99 at Best Buy
• 250GB console: $199.99 at Shopko
• 4GB bundle with Skylanders Starter Pack Bundle: $149.99 at Walmart
• 4GB bundle with Kinect: $199.99 at Kmart
• 4GB console with headset and $30 in coupons: $169.99 at Radio Shack
• 4GB bundle with Kinect, Kinect Adventures, Disneyland Adventures: $199.99 on Amazon
• 4GB bundle with Kinect, Kinect Adventures, Disneyland Adventures: $199.99 at Sam’s Club
• 4GB bundle with Kinect, Kinect Adventures, Disneyland Adventures: $199.99 at Microsoft Store -
• 4GB bundle with Kinect, Kinect Adventures, Disneyland Adventures: $199.99 at Target
• 4GB bundle with Kinect and 50 percent off ACIII or Epic Mickey 2: $219.99 starting
• 4GB bundle with Kinect and a free Air Flo controller and three months of Xbox Live Gold: $249.99 at Toys ‘R’ Us

PlayStation 3 hardware and bundles

• 250GB bundle with Uncharted Dual Pack and Infamous Collection: $199.99 at Amazon
• 250GB bundle with Uncharted Dual Pack and Infamous Collection: $199.98 at GameStop
• 250GB bundle with Uncharted Dual Pack and Infamous Collection: $199.99 at Best Buy
• 250GB bundle with Uncharted Dual Pack and Infamous Collection: $199.99 at Walmart
• 250GB bundle with Uncharted Dual Pack and Infamous Collection and $40 in coupons: $219.99 at Radio Shack
• 250GB bundle with Uncharted Dual Pack and Infamous Collection and a controller: $249.99 at Sam’s Club
• 250GB bundle with Uncharted Dual Pack and Infamous Collection: $199.99 at Shopko
• 250GB bundle with Uncharted Dual Pack and Infamous Collection: $199.99 at Target
• 250GB bundle with Uncharted Dual Pack and Infamous Collection and a free AirFlo controller: $199.99 at Toys ‘R’ Us

Nintendo 3DS and DS hardware and bundles

• Red 3DS with Super Mario 3D Land pre-installed – $149.99 at Best Buy
• Red 3DS with Mario 3D Land pre-installed and $30 gaming coupon – $169.99 at Kmart
• Red 3DS with Mario 3D Land pre-installed and $20 for Sears members – $169.99 at Sears
• Red 3DS with Mario 3D Land pre-installed – $199.99 at Target
• DSi XL – $99.96 at Walmart

PlayStation Vita hardware and bundles

• White Vita with Asssassin’s Creed III: Liberation – $199.99 at Amazon
• White Vita with ACIII: Liberation – $199.99 at GameStop
• Vita with Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified – $199.99 at Best Buy
• Vita with Lego Batman 2 – $199.99 at Target
• Vita with Black Ops Declassified and free Vita Essential Pack – $199.99 at Toys R Us

Games

Assassin’s Creed III

• Microsoft Store – $24.99
• Best Buy – $34.99
• Walmart – $38.96
• Target – $59.99 with a $20 gift card
• GameStop – $49.99

Dishonored

• Walmart – $25
• Amazon – $25
• Kmart – $59.99
• GameStop – $29.99
• Toys R Us – Part of buy 1, get 1 free promotion
• GameFly – $29.99 (PC)

Battlefield 3 Premium

• Walmart – $25
• Best Buy – $29.99
• GameStop – $29.99
• GameFly – $29.99 (PC)

FIFA Soccer 13

• GameFly – $19.99 (PC)
• Walmart – $25
• Amazon – $25
• Best Buy – $34.99
• Kmart – $34.99
• GameStop – $39.99

Borderlands 2

• Walmart – $25
• Best Buy – $34.99
• Target – $34.99
• GameStop – $39.99
• GameFly – $44.99 (PC)

Forza Horizon

• Walmart – $15
• Microsoft Store – $14.99
• Best Buy – $34.99
• Kmart – $34.99
• Target – $59.99 with $20 gift card
• GameStop – $39.99

Diablo III

• GameStop – $29.99
• Best Buy – $34.99

Halo 4

• Target – $59.99 with $20 gift card

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

• Walmart – $25
• Amazon – $25
• GameStop – $29.99
• GameFly – $29.99 (PC)

Madden NFL 13

• Walmart – $25
• Amazon – $25
• Best Buy – $34.99
• Kmart – $34.99
• Target – $34.99
• GameStop – $39.99
• Toys R Us – Part of the buy 1, get 1 free promotion

XCOM: Enemy Unknown

• Walmart – $25
• GameFly – $44.99 (PC)

Need For Speed: Most Wanted

• Walmart – $25
• GameStop – $29.99
• Best Buy – $29.99
• Target – $34.99
• Kmart – $34.99
• Toys R Us – Parrt of the buy 1, get 1 free promotion

Xbox Live deals

Games on Demand

• Dead Island – $19.99
• Gunstringer – $19.99
• Left 4 Dead 2 – $19.99
• Portal 2 – $19.99

Xbox Live Arcade

• Daytona USA – 400 Points
• Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light – 600 Points
• Magic: The Gathering 2013 – 400 Points
• Rock Band Blitz – 600 Points
• Sega Vintage Collection: Alex Kidd & Co. – 400 Points
• Sega Vintage Collection: Golden Axe Collection – 400 Points
• Sega Vintage Collection: Monster World Collection – 400 Points
• South Park: Tenorman’s Revenge – 400 Points
• Space Channel 5: Part 2 – 400 Points
• Spelunky – 600 Points
• Warp – 400 Points

Half-price DLC

• Darksiders II Argul’s Tomb – 280 Points
• Darksiders II Death Rides Pack – 280 Points
• Dead Island Bloodbath Arena MP Mode – 400 Points
• Dead Island Ryder White – 400 Points
• Forza 4 August Playseat Car Pack – 280 Points
• Forza 4 July Car Pack – 280 Points
• Forza 4 September Car Pennzoil Car Pack – 280 Points
• Forza 4 Porsche Pack – 800 Points
• Gunstringer El Diablo’s ‘Merican Adventure – 120 Points
• Gunstringer Real Big Shootin’ – 120 Points
• Left 4 Dead 2: The Passing – 280 Points
• Left 4 Dead 2: The Sacrifice – 280 Points
• Magic 2013 Expansion – 200 Points
• Sleeping Dogs – The High Roller Pack – 120 Points
• Sleeping Dogs – The Red Envelope Pack – 120 Points
• Sleeping Dogs – Top Dog Gold Pack – 120 Points

Half-price Avatar gear

• Bat Swarm Prop – 120 Points
• Demon Ninja male-only – 120 Points
• Dual Toy SMG’s - 160 Points
• Energy Katanas - 160 Points
• Frost Dragon – 120 Points
• Future Soldier male-only – 160 Points
• Ninja Training – 120 Points
• Titan Hammer – 120 Points
• Toy Sniper Rifle – 120 Points
• Underworld Boss Outfit Red male-only – 120 Points
• Vampire Wings – 120 Points
• Werebear Warlord male-only – 160 Points
• Werewolf Transformation – 120 Points

We’ll have more deals as they’re discovered.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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The good news for online retailers is that a third of shoppers plan to spend more, according to FatWallet’s consumer survey of 600 consumers across the U.S, while 54 percent are planning to spend the same amount. And most shoppers — 62 percent —  believe they’re going to get the best deals of the holiday season at the beginning of next week.

(One caveat on those numbers: they’re based on a subset of consumers who plan to shop on Cyber Monday, so they likely de-emphasize those with skinnier wallets to begin with. On the other hand, of those who plan to shop online this Cyber Monday, only three-quarters said they did the same last year.)

50% of people are looking for toy deals on Cyber Monday

But it’s a bit surprising to see what people are looking to buy on Cyber Monday. It’s not technology, at least primarily. Here’s what people will be shopping for next week:

• 70%: clothing deals
• 50%: toy deals
• 34%: appliance deals
• 32%: tablet deals
• 32%: laptop deals
• 26%: HDTV deals
• 23%: smartphone deals
• 26%: other deals

Clothing, toys, and appliances. Ignoring the fact that the main point of Cyber Monday is online shopping, there’s not a lot of technology showing up … especially the traditional technology purchases such as computers, smartphones, TVs, and home stereo systems.

Which I guess is the good news for online retailers: online shopping is now truly widespread.

photo credit: Kevin Marks via photopin cc, spieri_sf via photopin cc

Well, perhaps it’s not quite time for Christmas music. But for those who want to prepare their websites for the most important shopping events of the year, now is definitely the time to get ready.

Cyber Monday generated more than $1 billion in sales in 2011. Almost half of online shoppers spend more money online in the Thanksgiving weekend than they do the entire rest of the year. And for some retailers, the Hanukkah to Christmas shopping season brings in almost half of the year’s revenue.

So you’d better be prepared to handle millions of shoppers.

But it’s not just about server capacity. It’s also about remarketing programs, free shipping offers, preparing for mobile, conversion rate optimization, shopping cart abandonment reduction, optimizing for search and social traffic, and more.

Monetate, the online marketing optimization company, put together an infographic highlighting some of the key things anyone who sells online should know and do — before the holidays hit.

photo credit: Joriel “Joz” Jimenez via photo pin cc

With record-high Cyber Monday and Black Friday sales, online retailers came out as winners this year. The music industry, especially because of the sales of holiday music, had a strong season as well. Given that many people flock to the movies for Christmas, its no surprise that box office sales were up more than 60 percent for the Christmas weekend. And smartphones had a fabulous holiday season too because of a 140 percent increase in iPhone and Android activations.

But not every company benefited from the holiday season. According to Reuters, Sears’ and Kmart’s sales are down 5 percent from this time last year. Sears Corporation owns both retailers and announced Wednesday that it will be closing many Kmart and Sears stores next year. Kmart was hit hardest in its electronics department, which faces stiff competition from Walmart and Target. Sears is suffering from empty stores and lower quality shopping experiences.

For most businesses, this year’s sales figures for the holidays were strong. But for stores that entered the fourth quarter struggling to stay strong in the marketplace, this shopping season didn’t offer much help. For more stats on the holiday winners and losers, check out the infographic below.

[Infographic via FastUpFront]

Market research firm comScore said Sunday that shoppers spent $6 billion on Monday through Friday last week. Typically, about 40 percent of spending happens in the last two months of the year.

“Cyber Monday kicked the week off with a bang as consumers opened their wallets to the tune of $1.25 billion, but it was only the beginning of a very strong week of online holiday spending,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni in a statement. “As the deals from this week expire, it will be important to see the degree to which consumers return to the same retailers to continue their holiday shopping, thereby helping improve retailers’ profit margins, or if we experience a pullback in consumer spending – which has occurred in previous years – before promotional offers and spending intensity pick back up in earnest around mid-December.”

Cyber Monday sales were $1.25 billion, the biggest online shopping day in history. On Tuesday and Wednesday, online shopping sales also broke $1 billion each day (Tuesday Nov. 29 was $1.12 billion; Wednesday Nov. 30 was $1.03 billion). Heavy discounting and promotions, as well as free shipping, got shoppers in the holiday spirit. About 63 percent of sales had free shipping, compared to 52 percent a year ago.

“Consumers have come to expect free shipping during the holiday promotion periods, and retailers, in turn, have realized that they must offer this incentive,” said Fulgoni.

Online sales were up 15 percent to $18.7 billion in November and the first two days of December, compared with the comparable period a year ago. Overall, online shopping accounts for 8 to 10 percent of holiday spending.

A year ago, Cyber Monday sales topped $1 billion for the first time. Black Friday sales were $816 million, up 26 percent from a year ago. Cyber Monday was $1.25 billion, up 22 percent from a year ago. The week ending Dec. 2 was $5.9 billion, up 15 percent.

Nintendo’s newest flagship video games, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and Super Mario 3D Land, have both sold over 500,000 units in the U.S. alone, according to an interview with a Nintendo executive.

Both of the games are critical to Nintendo’s sales this holiday season, which has turned out to be a very competitive season among game publishers and hardware makers. Roughly 40 percent to 50 percent of annual U.S. retail sales take place in November and December, according to Anita Frazier, analyst at market researcher NPD. Super Mario 3D Land is Nintendo’s newest addition to their handheld, the Nintendo 3DS, and was released on November 11. Soon after, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword was released the next week on November 20 for the Nintendo Wii.

With the help of Black Friday, both games broke sales records by being the fastest selling handheld Mario title and fastest selling Zelda game to date. Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime told USA Today that Super Mario 3D Land sold more than 500,000 units while The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword sold 535,000 units since launch.

Along with the game sales, the Nintendo 3DS and Nintendo Wii saw big sales as well with 3DS sales tripling from early November and the Nintendo Wii selling 500,000 units during the Black Friday sales period.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Best Buy sold out of Research in Motion’s PlayBook tablets this Black Friday, leading to speculation that the company was canning the tablet altogether.

Best Buy confirmed to VentureBeat that it is not canceling the PlayBook; it’s just temporarily sold out.

After purchasing PlayBooks for the sale price of $199 on Best Buy’s website, customers reported having credit cards charged, with e-mails following soon after stating Best Buy was not going to deliver the tablet. Some said inventory issues were blamed, but others were given no explanation. While this looked like another bump on RIM’s road to recovery, it could be a positive for the company. After all, having its Best Buy inventory wiped out online and in-store is a sign that people actually want to buy RIM’s tablet.

The mobile company has been losing steam for some time now, amplified by recent outages to its Blackberry service, a push back of updates to its PlayBook operating system and now the steep PlayBook holiday sale price, $300 off the regular price of $499. The company’s second quarter revenue was down ten percent year over year. PlayBook sales topped out at 200,000 shipped units, half of the 400,000 units expected. The price drop seems to have helped the tablet, however, making it more competitive with eReaders on the market, instead of the iPad and its Android competitors.

One customer detailed his experience on Best Buy’s customer forum. The person ordered a PlayBook to be picked up at a local Best Buy. The next day, he received an e-mail saying the store did not have any PlayBooks in stock, but he could call the general Best Buy number to check availability in other stores and receive free shipping on the tablet. He decided to wait for the PlayBook to come back in stock online and when it did that day, he placed a second order. The next day Best Buy sent him a second e-mail saying there was “a change to the status of your order,” and his credit card would be credited.

To figure out what was going on, he called customer service, who said it was a fraud issue and sent him to the fraud department. The fraud department didn’t know why his order had been rescinded and stated that this was not a fraud issue. The customer service representative, which he returned to, said it was a stock availability issue.

Electronista reported calling a Best Buy which confirmed canceling all shipments.

It’s wouldn’t be surprising if Best Buy did want to strip its shelves of the PlayBook, however. Others such as Sprint have already done so when it decided not to order RIM’s 4G version of the tablet in August.

So who is this year’s biggest winner on the web? Survey says, Amazon.

Amazon sales jumped 30 percent on Thanksgiving Day and continued to climb throughout the weekend, suggesting a massive Cyber Monday climax, according to data compiled by e-commerce software and services provider ChannelAdvisor.

ChannelAdvisor calculates its same-store sales metric by tracking the sales of more than 3,000 retailer customers to determine year-over-year growth.

Amazon saw 50 percent  sales growth on Black Friday, 49 percent growth on Saturday and 59 percent growth on Sunday, making it the undisputed winner in terms of same-store sales growth, according to ChannelAdvisor data.

Holiday 2010 vs 2011 -- Amazon

Those numbers sound impressive, but comparatively speaking the online retailer and Kindle maker is a bit behind its growth of last year. In 2010, the company skyrocketed to 80 percent sales growth by Cyber Monday, albeit in a far less linear fashion (as ChannelAdvisor’s chart depicts above). And with some of the big deals Amazon is offering customers today, there’s still a chance it could have another record day.

Across the board, e-commerce sales showed 17 percent growth on Thanksgiving Day, 20 percent growth on Black Friday, 21 percent growth on Saturday and 27 growth on Sunday.

eBay has faired remarkably well, as early data from the company already suggested, and ChannelAdvistor puts the company’s sales growth at 15 percent for each day of the holiday weekend.

Holiday 2010 vs 2011

Altogether, the data suggests that online consumers are scoffing at the idea of just two blowout holiday discount days. Instead, they’re spending continuously online and via mobile, and at accelerating levels throughout the Thanksgiving Day holiday weekend.

[Image via luxuryluke/Flickr]

Cyber Monday sales may reach $1.2 billion this year, reports the LA Times, up from over $1 billion last year. 122 million Americans are expected to take part in Cyber Monday deals, and the number of consumers using their smartphones to shop is expected to double, according to a recent survey by BigResearch.

By comparison, Black Friday sales this year were $816 million (up 26 percent from a year ago), according to ComScore.

Not surprisingly, the rise of Cyber Monday seems to follow the rise of e-commerce in general. As ComScore’s Andrew Lipsman points out, Cyber Monday was just the 12th-biggest online shopping day back in 2006, but it steadily rose through the years, reaching the No. 1 spot for the first time last year.

Shop.org first coined the term “Cyber Monday” in 2005 as a marketing term to explain the noticeable rise in online shopping sales the Monday after Thanksgiving. The notion was that consumers were returning to high-speed internet connections at work and following through with purchases they had in mind over the holiday weekend.

Last year, over 12.1 percent of consumers surveyed by BigResearch said they planned to shop at work. This year that number has jumped to 15.9 percent. The company recently found that 76 million Americans will likely shop online during the holiday season.

It’s worth noting just how much mobile shopping has exploded when it comes to Cyber Monday. 3.6 million consumers used their phones to shop for deals in 2009, a number that is expected to triple to 17.8 million this year. That’s double the number of consumers who used their phones on Cyber Monday last year (7.3 million), according to BigResearch.

The survey estimate that 118 million Americans will shop Thursday through Monday and consumer electronics trailed only clothes as the most popular gifts purchased this weekend.

“Black Friday shopping has fast become a Thanksgiving weekend tradition, like football or a post-Turkey dinner nap, for millions of shoppers,” said Shawn Dubravac, chief economist and director. “The holiday shopping season got off to a strong start as many hit the stores or went online to kick-off their holiday shopping as soon as they finished Thanksgiving dessert. These bargain hunters were able to find the deals they were after.”

About 48 percent of all shoppers bought or will buy consumer electronics from Thursday through Monday, the survey found. More than 60 percent of shoppers were buying clothes in the same time frame. The CEA’s annual CE Holiday Purchase Patterns study showed separately that the average consumer will spend an all-time high of $246 on electronics gifts this year, up 6 percent from last year and amounting to a third of all gift spending.

Black Friday and Saturday were the most popular days to shop during the period, though 11 percent of shoppers got out on Thanksgiving Day. The most popular electronics purchases, in order of priority, are digital cameras, video game consoles, accessories such as cables and cases, TVs, notebook computers, smartphones, MP3 players, eBook readers, and tablet computers.

Mass merchants were the most popular place to ship, with roughly 77 percent of those who had already shopped saying they shopped at a mass merchant. Department stores, electronics stores, and online retailers were also popular. About 46 percent of shoppers purchased their consumer electronics online.

Of those who shopped, 69 percent said the deals and sales were good or excellent. When it came to electronics, 61 percent said the deals were good or excellent. About 60 percent said the deals they found in stores were better than online.

“Electronics continue to be the must-have gifts of the holiday as consumers are allocating more of their overall gift budget to buy the latest, innovative technologies,” said DuBravac. “Mature product categories, such as televisions, digital cameras and MP3 players, fared well this weekend as unprecedented price points proved too tempting for shoppers to ignore.”

The number underscores the relentless march of digital commerce as users prefer to surf the malls of cyberspace rather than brave crowds in physical stores. ComScore said that e-commerce sales for the first 25 days of the holiday season — Nov. 1 to Nov. 25 — were $12.7 billion in the U.S., up 15 percent from $11.1 billion a year ago. On Thanksgiving Day, sales were $479 million, up 18 percent from $407 million a year ago.

“Despite some analysts’ predictions that the flurry of brick-and-mortar retailers opening their doors early for Black Friday would pull dollars from online retail, we still saw a banner day for e-commerce with more than $800 million in spending,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni. “With brick-and-mortar retail also reporting strong gains on Black Friday, it’s clear that the heavy promotional activity had a positive impact on both channels.”

On Cyber Monday, Nov. 28, sales are expected to be the strongest for online retailers. That day is popular because it is the day when shoppers can order and be confident their packages will arrive in the mail before Christmas day. Shop.org says that eight out of ten online retailers are running special online promotions on Cyber Monday. Last year, Cyber Monday was the heaviest day of online spending ever, with sales exceeding $1 billion. ComScore expects another record this year.

Consumers flocked to sites describing Black Friday deals. Bfads.net saw 3.9 million unique visitors from Nov. 21 to Nov. 25, up 51 percent from a year ago. Theblackfriday.com saw 3.2 million visitors, up 137 percent from a year ago. Amazon saw the most traffic on Black Friday among retailers, followed by Walmart, Best Buy, Target and Apple.

[image credit: digital trends]

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Thanksgiving Day 2011 will go down as a day when many of you opted to indulge in more than just an extra helping of turkey. A growing number of shoppers opened up their mobile wallets for online deals too good to pass up.

The U.S. holiday saw a 511 percent jump in global mobile payment volume from Thanksgiving 2010, with a majority of folks in the U.S. shopping via mobile between 6:00 and 7:00 p.m. PST, payments platform Paypal announced Friday.

A much larger pool of mobile shoppers contributed to the gigantic leap in payment volume. According to PayPal, an eBay-owned company, there was a 350 percent increase in the number of global customers shopping on mobile this year. Shoppers in New York, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami and Chicago opted to pay via PayPal mobile more than shoppers elsewhere in the world, the company said.

eBay mobile also experienced record Thanksgiving Day activity in the U.S. “The amount shoppers in the U.S. spent via eBay Mobile more than doubled this Thanksgiving over last year,” eBay said in a press statement.

Perhaps, if the day after Thanksgiving is Black Friday, the Thanksgiving Day mobile shopping phenomenon warrants its own name. Couch Potato Thursday, anyone?

But what’s really going on here? The prevalence of smartphones and tablets means that consumers can now shop from the comfort of their couches any time they’d like. And eBay wisely kicked off a massive “When it’s on your mind, it’s on eBay” television ad campaign in September of this year to promote its mobile application as a convenient, whenever-the-mood-strikes-you shopping assistant. Consumers apparently took notice.

The company said Toms shoes, iPhone accessories and a Traxxas brand radio-controlled truck were among the most popular items purchased via eBay mobile in the fashion, electronics and toys categories.

The big bump in mobile shopping underscores the fact that tablets and mobile phones are fast-becoming more common mechanisms for shopping, and further suggests that the emerging mobile pay/wallet industry is on the cusp of a breakout moment.

It’s the day after Thanksgiving, and the VentureBeat offices are deserted. Where is everyone? Out shopping for insane Black Friday deals, apparently.

VentureBeat chief technical officer and resident videographer Christopher Peri spends some quality time with his camera, talking about what’s going on with holiday shopping this year. So far, online shopping is up 14 percent over the same period last year, which is a great trend.

Chris also talks about the top 10 Black Friday deals for gamers, including Uncharted 3, Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword, the Xbox 360 Kinect controller, and a cool 3D TV from Sony.

Looking for an e-book reader? The Nook Simple Touch and the Kindle are both just $79 this weekend, and Kindles are just as cheap.

And finally, get a glimpse of the future: The Landing Zone is a slick-looking docking station for the MacBook Air.

Looking for the best deals? Here’s our advice on the best apps for holiday shoppers.

Around 10:20 on Thanksgiving night, the unidentified woman shot pepper spray inside the store when the coverings were lifted off items she intended to purchase.

“Somehow she was trying to use it to gain an upper hand,” police Lt. Abel Parga told The Associated Press.

The use of the chemical agent appears to have set off a small panic in the store, resulting in 20 minor injuries, according to fire department officials who said that “rapid crowd movement” was to blame for the injuries.

The store remained open after the incident, and people on the scene continued to shop, though many probably wish they had made their purchases online instead.

The woman fled the scene, according to police, and we can assume she didn’t get her Black Friday discounts.

via Washington Post. Hat tip: Anup

Image via mag3737/Flickr

The holidays came early for a lot of gamers in November, with releases ranging from Uncharted 3: Drake’s Fortune to Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 and the Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword.

Starting Friday, everybody else will start piling into the gift-buying market as well. In general, the last two months of the year can account for as much as 40 percent of the game industry’s revenues. Black Friday deals will abound as games compete for a share of shoppers’ wallets. Traditionally, the last six weeks of the year have been a critical season for the traditional console game industry, and that is probably the case for the digital game industry as well.

This year, U.S. retail game sales have been weak for the first 10 months of the year. Sales grew 1 percent in October but were down 6 percent in September, down 23 percent in August, and down 23 percent in July. Market researcher NPD is forecasting that game sales will get a little boost in the last two months of the 2011, resulting in flat to down 2 percent for the full year.

Fortunately, there are other parts of the industry that are providing growth. Those other parts include used games, rentals, online games, mobile games and social games. NPD is always behind in measuring those sectors, but the data from the second quarter showed that the entire game industry, including these sectors, grew 1 percent the second quarter.

Free-to-play games, where people play for free and pay real money for virtual goods, are growing fast. Market researcher Strategy Analytics expects the virtual goods market to grow from $6.8 billion in 2011 to $12.7 billion in 2016. Nexon, the Korean-Japanese free-to-play online games company that has filed for an IPO, saw its sales grow 26 percent in the past year. That means that about a billion dollars in hardcore gaming revenue is no longer going into the pockets of console game makers.

Last year, the crowds failed to materialize to buy retail games in the last two months of the year, despite a record launch for Call of Duty Black Ops. Total video game sales in 2010 were $18.58 billion, down 6 percent from $19.7 billion in 2009, according to NPD. The weakness last year was due to hardware revenues, which were down 13 percent. Even with price reductions on game hardware, the market didn’t expand enough to compensate for the lower prices.

By comparison, Zynga is now generating a billion dollars a year in revenue for its social games and, based on a survey by Raptr, it is taking time away from time spent playing hardcore games.

But as much as digital game sales are taking money out of the pockets of the U.S. game retailers and console game publishers, they are also taking money away from other forms of entertainment. As we noted a year ago, games are becoming one of the biggest forms of entertainment, competing favorably with music and movies as they vie for the attention of old and young, male and female audiences alike. With the vast growth of games such as The Sims Social on Facebook, the notion of being a gamer is becoming as meaningless as a “moviegoer,” since everyone’s playing.

As the console game companies diversify into the digital space — Electronic Arts gets about a quarter of its revenue from digital games — they can also benefit from the expansion of digital gaming, which is doing a much better job of turning non-players into casual gamers on platforms such as the iPhone or Facebook.

There are indications that the holidays are also a big season for digital games. For Zynga and Nexon alike, the fourth quarter is always the biggest revenue quarter of the year. The iPhone and iPad game markets usually see a pop around the holidays because kids and adults download and share new games at family gatherings. The mobile game companies are launching their major titles — such as Epic Games’ Infinity Blade 2 title debuting on the iPhone 4S and iPad 2 on Dec. 2 — during this season as well.

Digital retailers have also learned the same sort of Black Friday deals. Blizzard Entertainment’s online store is selling a packaged version of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty for $29.99, or 50 percent off the retail price. But the offer ends Monday, November 28. As just as Black Friday has become a traditional shopping day in the malls, Cyber Monday has become a traditional day for e-commerce, and this year that includes games.

By the Christmas holidays, digital game sales can be expected to grow, providing fierce competition not only for packaged game sales at stores but also other forms of entertainment. While it’s hard to figure out if retail games will stay strong, the easiest prediction to make is that the overall game industry will grow in the critical last six weeks of the year.

Lastly, I hope you’re having a great Thanksgiving holiday week. Thank you for reading.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Of course there are plenty of people who don’t care much for Black Friday –  avoiding it at all cost due to the massive crowds. However, last year, at least 212 million shoppers did participate to generate an estimated $45 billion in sales.

To find out about the type of person who chooses to stand outside a Target parking lot at midnight for a cheap Xbox 360 Kinect game pack (and/or name brand athletic footwear, etc.), social media analysis firm MashWork conducted a study based on Black Friday-related conversations from microblogging social network Twitter.

MashWork analyzed over 270,000 tweets referencing Black Friday from Sept. 26 to Nov. 17. The data collected — displayed in the infographic embedded below — yielded answers about what items people were most excited about buying, who they were shopping for and where they plan to make their purchases.

Some of the results actually surprised me. For instance, 46 percent of people plan on buying items on Black Friday for themselves, which sort of defeats the purpose of a gift-giving holiday. Also, the study indicated that computers/tablets and expensive basketball athletic shoes (like a pair of Black Air Jordan Cement 3s) were among the most talked about items.

As for tablets, MashWork notes that the iPad is the dominant device referenced, despite the launch of competing products from both Amazon (Kindle Fire) and Barnes & Noble (Nook Tablet).

“For every 10 times the iPad 2 is talked about in relation to Black Friday, the Kindle Fire is mentioned just once,” the company states in the report. “Shoppers tend to discuss brands on social media that they are engaged and familiar with. Amazon is trusted, but Kindle Fire conversation won’t pick up until more people have used it.”

Check out MashWork’s Black Friday Twitter infographic below for a visual representation of the data from the firm’s study.

Do you plan on taking advantage of Black Friday deals? Let us know in the comments. Also, make sure you check out VentureBeat Senior Editor Devindra Hardawar’s post about the essential Black Friday mobile apps and services for shoppers.

We’ve compiled a list of our favorite apps and services to make you a Black Friday master:

TGI Black Friday: If you haven’t come across this nifty app yet, then you’re likely new to the whole Black Friday app business. TGI Black Friday, available free for the iPhone and Android, compiles leaked deals and flyers from both online and retail stores. You can keep track of deals, share them with friends, and download PDFs of store flyers. If you download just one Black Friday app, this should be it. (All of TGI Friday’s deals are also available on its website, but since you can’t synchronize saved items between the site and app, we recommend you do most of your browsing on the app.)

Black Friday by Fatwallet: This app provides deals to retail stores from Fatwallet.com’s forums. It doesn’t cover online stores, but it may contain some deals to brick and mortar retailers that TGI Black Friday doesn’t offer.

ShopSavvy: Before you snap up a supposed deal, you can use ShopSavvy to scan product barcodes to search the web and competing retailers to see if there are any better offers.

FastMall, Point Inside, Micello: These apps all offer indoor mall maps, which will help you to keep your bearings if you need to trek out to far off shopping centers.

Lemon, Slice, OneReceipt: All of these services help you manage your physical and electronic receipts, which will help you keep better track of Black Friday spending. They all offer mobile apps to let you snap a photo of physical receipts, as well as the ability to scan your inbox for digital receipts. OneReceipt has yet to launch, but you can sign up for the private beta right now.

Mint: Want to keep track of your spending on a broader level? Mint will help you to make sense of Black Friday spending, as well as all of your other everyday expenses. If you need help figuring out a personal budget, Mint is the ticket.

And, as always, we’ll keep you in the loop on particularly great deals here at VentureBeat, like Apple’s upcoming Black Friday plans.

Have any useful Black Friday apps or services in mind not mentioned here? Let us know in the comments, as we’ll be updating this post throughout today and tomorrow with your suggestions.

Photo by Tshien on Flickr

Online shoppers are spending more than ever, dropping $9.67 billion between Nov. 1 and Nov. 20, according to a new comScore report. That’s a 14 percent increase over the same period last year.

By the time the dust settles at the end of December, comScore, predicts that online shopping will be up 15 percent over last year.

The study tracks non-travel and consumer spending online at thousands of online commerce sites. Heavy discounting and offers of free shipping are some of the forces driving the trend.

ComScore is one of the world’s leading online research firms.

The company predicts that $37.6 billion will be spent online through the end of the holiday shopping period, from November through January, which is a 15 percent increase over 2010. In 2010 comScore reported a 13 percent increase in online shopping activity over 2009, so the trend appears to be continuing.

Santa image via ShutterStock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Barnes & Noble will release a limited edition Nook Simple Touch e-reader with a white border for a bargain-bin price of $79 on Black Friday, the company announced today.

The most basic Amazon Kindle now retails for $79, no matter what day of the week is. However, the Nook Simple Touch has several clear advantages, as the basic Kindle does not have a touch screen and features some advertising.

For Black Friday, Barnes & Noble will offer the limited edition Nook Simple Touch in physical stores only until supplies last. Barnes & Noble claims the latest version of the Nook Simple Touch offers 25 percent faster page turns than any other E-Ink-based reader on the market. Amazon has not announced any Black Friday deals on its e-readers, but the online retailer does have many other Black Friday deals.

Barnes & Noble has also listed some Nook accessories it will have discounted on Black Friday: a free Clear Screen Film Kit with purchase of a Nook Color or Nook Tablet Power Kit will sell for $24.95, and a free Nook Simple Touch Power Adapter with purchase of a Lyra Light will sell for $14.95. The company also plans to offer 50 percent off on a number of book titles.

Both Amazon and Barnes & Noble are locked into the strategy of offering subsidized hardware with the aim of selling lots of content to generate revenues, unlike Apple, which pushes media access to better sell hardware. While Amazon has a bigger presence in e-books, we can’t help but love the competition between B&N and Amazon in this space. Because when they fight, we win.