Predicting “Black Friday is going to be crazy,” BJ’s Wholesale Club CEO Laura Sen said in the company’s Q3 2010 earnings webcast Wednesday the company will respond to competitors’ pricing strategies by continuing to “do what we do and do it well.” Sen said “we've already seen noise” from Target and Wal-Mart on toys and electronics. CFO Frank Forward said the company is reserving guidance estimates for end-of-year results based on uncertainty about holiday sales, adding concern about “the highly promotional holiday season.” The company is “cautious in general” about general merchandise sales for Q4, he said.

The Xbox 360 was the best-selling videogame home console system again in October, outselling the PS3 and Wii by wide margins, according to NPD data provided to Consumer Electronics Daily by an industry source. The research firm recently stopped providing hardware unit sales data to reporters (CED Oct 18 p5). But NPD continued to make other game industry sales data available, and the data again showed that overall U.S. sales were down from 2009.

The FCC found a wide array of video captioning problems in a first-of-its-kind study of all complaints to the commission about broadcast-TV and subscription-video programming in the 52 weeks through May 7. Equipment from broadcasters, cable operators and DBS providers had technical problems, and so did set-top boxes, said a report on digital closed captions by the Office of Engineering and Technology and the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau. They studied 107 complaints to the FCC.

Best Buy will open up to 15 Magnolia Design Centers annually for next several years and sees room for 100 U.S. locations, Magnolia Home Theater Chief Operating Officer Steve Delp told us. The design centers cover about 4,000 square feet inside standard Best Buy stores, in some cases replacing Magnolia Home Theater departments with an operation more oriented toward custom installations, Delp said. The first two locations opened in Costa Mesa, Calif., and Chicago. Four more have since opened in California.

The EPA said a task force was formed to develop a “national strategy” for “responsible electronics stewardship,” including improvements to federal procedures for managing used electronics. The task force will be co-chaired by the EPA, the General Services Administration (GSA) and the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). The move came as President Barack Obama drew attention in an America Recycles Day proclamation to the “challenge of protecting human health and the environment from potentially harmful effects of the improper handling and disposal” of electronics.

SouthPeak Interactive “faced a significant setback” in Q1 ended Sept. 30 as the videogame publisher released no new titles and wasn’t able to release My Baby games and other titles due to an ongoing court battle with French publisher Nobilis, CEO Melanie Mroz said in a Monday earnings call. SouthPeak swung to a $1.2 million loss, 2 cents per share, from a $687,000 profit, 1 cent, in Q1 last year. Revenue tumbled to $1.4 million from $16.7 million.

Same-store sales of electronics, music and books were weaker for Hastings Entertainment in Q3 ended Oct. 31 than a year earlier. But the retailer said same-store sales of movies and videogames improved enough for total same-store sales to increase 1.3 percent. Hastings’ loss narrowed to $3.08 million, 35 cents per share, from $3.44 million, 36 cents. But the loss “was greater than our internal forecast,” said Chief Financial Officer Dan Crow. Total revenue dipped to $112.28 million from $112.34 million, merchandise revenue growing to $94.46 million from $94.43 million, but rental revenue dipping to $17.67 million from $17.90 million.

The CE industry is voicing concerns over EPA plans to advance the effective date for version 5.0 of the Energy Star TV specification that was originally to take effect in May 2012. A new date has not yet been announced. For the first time in any Energy Star specification for consumer electronics, the TV version 5.0 will place a hard energy use cap of 108 watts. TV makers haven’t been “consulted at all,” about the proposed acceleration of the specification, said a CE executive.

Systemax will consider “alternatives” for the Circuit City brand as it seeks to bolster flagging Internet sales, Chief Financial Officer Larry Reinhold said Monday at the Sidoti & Co. conference in New York. Systemax, which also operates stores and Web sites under the CompUSA and Tiger Direct banners, hasn’t finalized its options for Circuit City, Reinhold said, but Systemax has been asked about franchising and licensing the brand for products in an approach reminiscent of Sharper Image. “We're looking at other alternatives to monetize it other than just as a shopping site,” Reinhold said.

Logitech’s is using its Google TV-based Revue device as a base for integrating its peripherals technology and building a white box OEM business, Ashish Arora, vice president and general manager of digital home, told us at the Digital Hollywood conference in New York. Since shipping Revue in late October, Logitech has been out of stock at some stores, Arora said. The Revue is sold through Amazon, Best Buy, Dish Network and Logitech.com, he said.