Just 3 months after the launch of the GameDealDaily forums, we have passed the 500 member milestone!  If you haven’t checked out the forums yet, here is a link:

 http://www.gamedealdaily.com/forum/

Once you join the forums you can choose to enter our weekly giveaways, in which we give 4 free games (or other video game related items) away every week!  Some of the games we have given away so far are: Gears of War 1 and 2, Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe, Grand Theft Auto IV, LittleBigPlanet, Super Smash Bros Brawl, and Call of Duty 4!

Here are the stats for the first 3 months of the GameDealDaily forums:

Members - 505

Total Posts - 5485

Total Topics - 293

 Top 15 Members (in terms of total posts) - Jrittmayer, uraizen, DarkTang, Smileface, DefaultGen, Kandal, baba19, stickfigx, Hostile, iOnE3nD, OnyxPrimal, pfeifer18, Ch33pSh33p, Ardy22, Dokuga 

http://www.giantbomb.com/guides/defaultgens-video-game-collecting-guide/729/

 Very entertaining, informative, and comprehensive guide. I wish I had known about gixen when I was buying a lot on ebay. I always wonder how buyers snipe so many of my auctions with an impossibly low amount of time before it ends!

Last week’s daily deals saw some mixed success. Left 4 Dead sold really well, and Animal Crossing did alright. Mortal Kombat for XBox 360 and PS3 both disappointed, as we may have overestimated demand for that one. Gears of War 2 also didn’t do well, which was a big surprise.

This week you’re going to see some accessories as the daily deals. Accessories generally sell better than games, since an accessory can appeal to all owners of a particular system, and not only fans of a specific game franchise or game genre.

We need your help! Cheapassgamer.com is holding their 6th annual “Cheapy Awards”. They’re currently in the nomination process. I’d like to secure a nomination in the category for “Best Independent Online Game Retailer” for 2008. Here’s a link to the page:

http://www.cheapassgamer.com/forums/sho … p?t=210972

All you have to do is post a nomination for GameDealDaily (or gamedealdaily.com).

If we can crack the top five in total posts in that thread, we should get a nomination for the award. Thanks in advance!

 Sales numbers are after the break.  Some thoughts on the numbers:

Is Call of Duty now the #1 franchise in gaming? Gears of War 2 sales pale in comparison to World at War sales for 360 in December. They might’ve been able to give a new Halo game a run for its money.

Courtesy of the NPD:

Console Sales for December 2008

DS: 3.04m 1.47m (up 94%)
Wii: 2.15m 110K (up 5%)
Xbox 360: 1.44m 604K (up 72%)
PSP: 1.02m 599K (up 142%)
PS3: 726K 348K (up 92%)
PS2: 410K 204K (up 99%)

Top 10 Games of December 2008

1. Wii Play w/ remote - Wii – Nintendo – 1.46 million
2. Call of Duty: World at War - Xbox 360 – Activision – 1.33 million*
3. Wii Fit w/ balance board – Wii – Nintendo – 999K
4. Mario Kart Wii w/ wheel – Wii – Nintendo – 979K
5. Guitar Hero: World Tour - Wii – Activision – 850K*
6. Gears of War 2 - Xbox 360 – Microsoft – 745K*
7. Left 4 Dead - Xbox 360 – Electronic Arts – 629K
8. Mario Kart - DS – Nintendo – 540K
9. Call of Duty: World at War - PS3 – Activision – 533K
10. Animal Crossing: City Folk - Wii – Nintendo – 497K*

* Includes Collector’s, Limited, Legendary, and Bundled Editions

2008 yearly software sales after the break:
Read the rest of this entry »

 Would Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty games be as good as they are if not for Treyarch?

Read the rest of this entry »

Circuit City announced today that they were closing their remaining 567 US stores.  I guess we all knew this was coming, but still kind of sad of see.

Like many others, my favorite memory of Circuit City is the $5 video game clearance sale from the summer of 2003. For those of you that didn’t experience the event, it consisted of Circuit City basically discounting half of their video game stock from regular price to $5. This set off a shopping frenzy in which I travelled to every Circuit City in metro Detroit over the first two days of the sale. I never thought I’d be one of those people waiting in their car at 9am for a retail store to open, but sure enough there I was. I still have my sealed copy of Ikaruga for Gamecube that I was lucky enough to obtain for $5 during that sale.

Today we would like to describe a few changes that we have made to Gamedealdaily.com.  The biggest announcement is the addition of a forums section.  This section has five boards where you can discuss our site, video games, and basically anything else that motivates you to make a post.  Be sure to check the weekly giveaway forum, where we will give multiple prizes away every week, including some of the newest and hottest video games.  Also, if you have any suggestions or questions about the site, there is also a board for those.

 Another change will make it easier for us to adjust trade-in prices.  If you haven’t traded any games in to Gamedealdaily.com yet, be sure to click the ‘Sell Us Your Games’ link found at the top of the page.  We offer the most competitive trade-in prices online or offline, and we will now be able to keep our prices as up-to-date as possible.

Finally, you may have noticed that the picture for the deal of the day on our front page is often blurry as a result of it being blown up.  We have modified the front page to provide a cleaner, more efficient presentation.  This also carries over to the individual product pages, where the product pictures were sometimes too large and would obscure information and even order details.  The larger pictures have now been downsized to eliminate these issues.

As always, thank you for visiting and shopping at Gamedealdaily.com.  We hope that the changes we have made will improve your experiences with our site.

In June 2008 Nintendo released a Metallic Rose colored DS Lite system in North America.  The system was actually released for the first time in the holiday 2007 period with the limited edition Nintendogs Best Friends bundle.

The Nintendogs bundle, along with the Zelda Gold DS bundle, quickly sold out and couldn’t be found on store shelves after Christmas.  June 2008 marked the re-release of the Metallic Rose system in America.

I found it odd at the time that Nintendo would choose another “pinkish” color for their DS Lite system.  I fully recognize the DS Lite is likely the most female-friendly handheld ever produced, but I do not know a single woman that claims to prefer the dulled rose color to the bright pink.

From my own sales experiences, the Pink DS Lite was our best-selling color for the holiday 2007 season.  Therefore, I would be surprised if the color was replaced by the Metallic Rose color.

Come this fall, however, I’ve noticed that the Coral Pink DS Lite systems have become pretty difficult to find at retail.  My suppliers have plenty of Metallic Rose DS Lites to offer up, but not a Coral Pink to be found.  This development led me to Google to run a product search across online retailers.

 http://www.google.com/products/catalog?hl=en&q=coral+pink+ds+lite&cid=10411728332368431483#ps-sellers

 According to this Google product search, there are only 13 retailers that have the Coral Pink system in stock.  From this list, less than a handful of retailers claims to have the item in stock.  The cheapest is $10 over MSRP.  The only notable brick & mortar retailer on the list is K-Mart, which admits that the item is out-of-stock on the website.

 A similar search for the Metallic Rose system nets dozens more listings, including listings from major retailers such as Toys R Us and Best Buy.  Aside from Amazon.com, I could not find the Coral Pink DS Lite in-stock at any major online retailers.

After considering the above information, I think it’s a reasonable hypothesis that the Coral Pink DS Lite has been phased out in favor of the Metallic Rose system.  If anyone out there has official word from Nintendo, be sure to pass it along.