HMV scents victory in blood of its rival

HMV's Simon Fox is pretty upbeat, despite having told the city that it's been selling "dire" numbers of CDs and DVDs in recent weeks.

How come? He's convinced the collapse of Game will help his store.

Righto, Simon. Although the total disappearance of Borders, Woolworths, and Zavvi hasn't noticeably helped your company, you think the closure of just half the Game chain will?

He does have some sort of convoluted logic:

"We've lived through a number of collapses of rivals – Zavvi, Woolies, Game – and when they are struggling they flood the market with distressed stock, which causes great disruption. They have now gone from 600 stores to 300 and that means that our position on the high street as strengthened."

The last big high street rival in music sales - Borders - closed in 2009, so if the echo of its closing down sales are to blame for the poor sales of recorded music in your stores now, you've got serious ghost problems.

More to the point, Game isn't shutting half its stores because it's getting more business than it can handle. There's not much to pick up there, surely?