One of the reasons Walmart (WMT) -) is so frequented by Americans is its close proximity to so many of them.
One of its stores is located within 10 miles of 90% of the U.S. population, so it's easy to understand why Walmart is the country's biggest retailer.
Related: Walmart makes a major store closure announcement
But it's not just ease of access that makes the chain so popular. The retailer famously carries hundreds of thousands of individual products, or what the industry calls stock-keeping units.
Each individual Walmart store keeps some 140,000 SKUs on a given day, from fruit to hand soap to electronics. Since many of these goods are bought and offered in bulk, they are normally sold at prices lower than those of competing retailers.
Online, Walmart carries even more, as many as 400 million SKUs. For reference, Amazon (AMZN) -) carries about 500 million, including products from its sellers and third-party vendors.
So it's Walmart's proximity, paired with its selection and low prices, that makes it a compelling choice to a vast swath of the population.
From time to time, though, Walmart will swap and remove certain items that wane in popularity and no longer make sense to stock countrywide.
And a reported upcoming decision to stop selling one piece of tech could be a bummer for kids and techies everywhere.
Walmart may stop selling a beloved item
Recent reports are surfacing that Walmart is considering a stop to the sale of most — if not all — physical Xbox games.
The reports come just days after reports that Best Buy (BBY) -) would stop selling disks, including movie DVDs and other physical media, at the end of the 2023 holiday season. And in late September Netflix (NFLX) -) stopped selling its DVD subscriptions for good.
John Fairhurst, chief executive of Limited Run Games, the Apex, N.C., distributor of physical videogames, was one of the first to report that Walmart might drop sales of physical Xbox games.
"I would expect to see this trend continue in 2024. I've heard rumblings that Wal-Mart is dropping physical Xbox games soon, and I have to imagine further cuts to physical gaming sections will be made as we get deeper into next year," he tweeted.
I would expect to see this trend continue in 2024. I've heard rumblings that Wal-Mart is dropping physical Xbox games soon, and I have to imagine further cuts to physical gaming sections will be made as we get deeper into next year. https://t.co/iKIEaDEGmf
— Josh Fairhurst (@LimitedRunJosh) October 12, 2023
Most popular videogames these days are played largely online via downloads, and sales of physical videogames have been waning for quite some time.
It is, after all, a large reason for the GameStop (GME) -) short squeeze in 2020. Some eagle-eyed retail investors noticed an outsized portion of the stock's public float was sold short and bought up the stock, which sent the share price soaring and caused losses for large investors.
The Digital Entertainment and Retail Association estimates that just 10.5% of video games sold are hard disks, with 89.5% of games sold in 2022 as downloads.
Xbox, which is owned by Microsoft (MSFT) -), is still popular, with 8.6 million units sold in 2022. That's because its Xbox Series X, which retails for around $499 and offers up to 8K high-dynamic range, allows for digital game downloads and subscriptions.
TheStreet has reached out to Walmart for comment.
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