Wal*Mart Watch

[Proteus]

Well...

Since the Walmart thing has been discussed to death, I figured I'd share my experience from last night trying to get Heavenly Sword for the PS3.

I decided to take a look around and see what was up with CE in there.

Well...

They have moved the Sony BD player out to the isle on it's own island with two displays running and some BD specific signage.

The 'hidef' movie section inside the PS3 case is now all blu-ray with the exception of two HDDVD movies (old ones).

They no longer carry _any_ Toshiba playback devices. There are no HDDVD, no DVD, or any CD players made by Toshiba in my neighborhood Walmart now. In fact, they dont' have any Toshiba televisions now either.

The only Toshiba products I could find in the entire store were laptops. They carried three models and their stock was low (you can see them in the locked case below the display model).

There was one remaining HDDVD add-on for Xbox that actually had a _lot_ of dust on it.

I asked the manager lady what was up and she said to her knowledge they will not be carrying any Toshiba CE products in the near future. She said it was something about 'a deal gone bad' and 'threats from Toshiba'. She also said that they are going to be 'significantly' pushing blu-ray in the future. She also stated that 'there are no HDDVD titles on her order sheet anymore' and that the HDDVD add-on for Xbox I saw is the last one they will likely carry as they don't sell and game case related space is now at a premium as they can't fit everything in it anymore.

I'm sure she had no clue what was really going on, but interesting that she would say such things especially considering she clearly had no interest in HiDef or CE in general but was 'just the manager'.