Retail

Sainsbury’s has announced that it enjoyed its best ever Christmas period, boasting strong performance and healthy increases in sales during the third quarter of its financial year. The supermarket reported that total sales for the three months ended January 3rd had risen by 4.8 per cent, or 5.3 per cent …

Zavvi will cut prices of all items in store by up to 50 per cent from Friday, January 9th. According to the firm’s administrator Ernst & young, the further reductions will come off prices that have already been discounted. Unlike Woolworths’ end-of-life sale, which left many shoppers annoyed at the …

Zavvi administrator Ernst & Young has closed 22 of the retailer’s UK stores – leading to the redundancy of 178 employees. That brings the total of Zavvi employees now without a job to 241, after 69 staff lost their jobs at the retailer’s London HQ last week. The Joint Administrators …

Sega has confirmed Aliens: Colonial Marines is still on course for a 2009 release, estimating the Gearbox shoot-‘em-up will arrive some time in Q1. Concerns arose after lower than expected sales of the studio’s previous title, Brothers In Arms: Hell’s Highway, sparking rumours that Sega would cut the funding on …

The worsening conditions on the UK High Street could lead to a record number of vacant retail outlets by the end of the year, analyst Experian has predicted. Ongoing retail administrations, disposals and rationalisations are expected to see the vacancy rate climb from its current seven per cent to ten …

Ahead of the release of its official figures next week, Famitsu publisher Enterbrain is predicting a significant decline in the value of the Japanese video games market in 2008. Enterbrain states that in 2007 the market was worth YEN 687.95 billion, whereas it expects the 2008 figure to be around …

AMERICAN PERIPHERALS distributor dreamGEAR is sizing up the UK and is set to bring a new line of products to European shores. DreamGEAR, recognised as one of the top 300 fastest growing US firms by Entrepreneur Magazine, provides video game and MP3 accessories. The firm already holds strong relationships with …

The UK’s largest independent games retailer, CHIPS, has re-launched its ecommerce website with the product offering expanded to include DVDs, CDs and books. The site, which also boasts a new design, no longer features pre-owned stock or mobile phone downloads. And CHIPS’ joint MD Don McCabe hopes that the new …

Publisher D3P has told MCV that Ben 10 will be a leading force this Christmas, following news that Ben 10: Protector of Earth for DS, PS2, Wii and PSP has sold over 2.5 million copies worldwide. The Cartoon Network-owned property has already been a huge global hit, with two movies …

The group founding partners of Zavvi have singled out the demise of EUK as having a big part to play in the chain’s going into administration . In a statement released following the news that broke this morning, Simon Douglas and Steve Peckham said: "We have done all that is …