Dvds, Games Ring In Sales

As expected, DVDs and video games powered the Christmas sales of consumer electronics retailers and salvaged the holiday selling season for their music subsidiaries. December sales announcements from Best Buy and Circuit City indicate that strong performances from those categories were able to counter a drop-off in mall traffic and declining prerecorded music sales.

Best Buy reports that its Musicland stores posted December sales of $414 million—a gain of 2% compared with a year ago. Musicland's comparable-store sales for December were up 3.8%. The company attributes the rise to the remerchandising of most Sam Goody stores to include more DVD movies, video-game hardware and software, and consumer electronics. Comparable-store sales of video-game hardware and software, including two new gaming platforms, posted triple-digit gains. Comparable-store sales of DVD movies increased in "the high double digits." Sales of prerecorded music continued to decline.

Best Buy stores generated total sales of $3.16 billion in December, up 18% from the year before. Comparable-store sales were up 6.2%.

Rival Circuit City Stores posted December sales of $1.83 billion compared with sales of $1.66 billion last year—a gain of 10%. The company's comparable-store sales also increased 10%. Circuit City said sales were "particularly strong" in its DVD and video-game categories.