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More than a few eyebrows are likely to be raised at the enthusiasm with which US retail giant Best Buy appears to be plunging into the UK games retail market, with the company keen to place games at the heart of its offering as it opens its first stores over here. The timing couldn't be more peculiar; after easily a decade of speculation about when America's major chains would finally begin to exploit the opportunities on these shores, Best Buy is turning up to plant its flag after a torrid couple of years which many commentators see as proof of an irreversible decline in high street retail.

It's tough to disagree with that assessment. Specialist retailers in the UK have been squeezed from all sides in recent months. The core gaming audience, more tech-savvy than other market segments, have flocked in increasing number to online stores like Amazon and Play.com. The casual audience attracted by the Wii is more likely to shop at a mainstream retail outlet such as catalogue retailer Argos than to walk into a specialist store. Even the launch of what should have been a pillar of strength for specialist retail last Christmas, in the form of Modern Warfare 2, was a bitter pill, with supermarket chains muscling in and discounting heavily - resulting in queues of gamers forming outside Tesco and Sainsbury supermarkets, rather than outside specialist stores.

To cap it all off, sales of boxed games have levelled off and are even declining in some quarters. Publicly, publishers and retailers alike dismiss this as a symptom of recession; privately, many worry that the recession has masked a more fundamental shift in consumer behaviour, which would mean that the meteoric growth in boxed sales seen over the past two decades will not return when the economy recovers. Instead, gamers' money and, more importantly, their time, is being absorbed by new platforms with new business models - business models which don't feature retail anywhere on the value chain.

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