Force Is With Amazon Winners

Notably missing from Amazon's list were expected holiday hits such as Sony's PlayStation Portable handheld game system and Microsoft's Xbox 360 game console. The Xbox 360's absence likely has to do with the limited quantities Microsoft is shipping this holiday season. Some analysts have estimated that the company will ship less than 1 million consoles to North American stores by the end of the year. Indeed, the two versions of the Xbox 360 that Amazon offers are both out of stock, according to the company's Web site.

Why the PSP is missing from the top-selling list may be harder to explain. Sony is expected to ship an adequate quantity of the game players this holiday season, and many analysts have expected Take- Two's Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories to be a "killer app" that would drive sales of the device.

Part of the reason may have to do with the fact that Amazon is selling a number of different PSP packages, depending on the games included with the device. Still the company is doing the same thing with Nintendo's GameBoy Advance and other game systems. And in November thus far, one of those GameBoy systems -- a special SpongeBob SquarePants version -- ranked as the second-best selling video game item. Meanwhile, on Friday, a value-pack version of the PSP was just the 16th most popular item in Amazon's video game area.

By department, some of the other top-selling products on Amazon included: in the jewelry section, a pearl necklace; in the watch section, a $12 Timex Time Teacher watch; in the beauty department, candy cane shower gel and bubble bath from philosophy; and in the kitchen store, an $18.88 quesadilla maker from Santa Fe. James Frey's A Million Little Pieces was the top-selling book on the site during the period and Intuit's QuickBooks Pro 2006, the best- selling software program.

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