While customers will only be able to use money earned from old games in Tesco stores, the company has stated that a wide-selection of preowned games will be available to buy and that credit can be redeemed against anything in store.

Tesco believes that its trade-in prices compare favourably with those of high street specialist games retailers. Gamers can expect to receive about £19 for recent Xbox 360 and PS3 titles like 2010 summer hit Red Dead Revolver. Popular Nintendo Wii games like New Super Mario Brothers and Mario Kart Wii can be exchanged for around £17 credit.

Tesco is just the latest in a series of businesses to move into the games trade-in market. Previously the preserve of specialist high chains like GAME, the last few years have seen companies such as HMV add a trade-in service to their existing retail offering. Supermarket Asda and catalogue-store Argos are also expected to expand into used games in the near future.

Any infringement on the trade-in market will upset many specialist retailers who have already faced stiff competition from the supermarkets in recent years. Last year Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury’s caused controversy by offering major new releases like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, FIFA 10 and Batman: Arkham Asylum at rock bottom – and sometimes below cost – prices.

The move will also attract the ire of large games publishers who receive no income from used software trade-ins and have recently started offering customers incentives to buy brand new copies of games including special preorder bonuses and exclusive downloadable content.

A-TAC Armoured Golf Cart

For golf buggy users who have been on the wrong end of a wayward drive, they may want to get one of these. This latest golf cart comes courtesy of the Indian design firm Metaltech Motor Bodies.

Called the A-TAC, or Anti-Terrorist Assault Cart the vehicle has been designed following the 2008 Mumbai bombings.

Basically, it appears that the firm has taken a standard golf cart and stuck some armour plating on it to create a vehicle that looks like something from a Batman movie.

The cart has a top speed of 15 miles per hour and is battery-powered with a six-hour charging life. It comes with a price tag of $43,000 and there is room for two adults in the vehicle. Sadly, there is no room for golf clubs or a drinks cooler.

The A-TAC has been designed to operate in confined spaces such as hotel corridors, but perhaps there could be a market for the vehicle on the golf course from which it is apparently derived!?

Although, if it were truly bullet-proof they’d surely do something to protect those exposed front wheels?

New shopping habits – most notably online shopping – may to be blame for a decline on the Great British High Street.

A Local Data Company study of nearly 700 shopping locations across the UK revealed that almost 18000 retailers had shut up shop by the end of 2009.

Margate in Kent showed the highest proportion of vacant retail premises with 1 in 4 shop fronts being boarded up while retail operations in the North East and the Midlands also showed high levels of vacancies.

Whilst changing retail habits of shoppers had a huge impact on the high street, so do did the recession with several well known chains succumbing to the effects of the economic downturn, including First Quench – who owned the Threshers, Victoria Wines and Haddows brands – and book chain Borders..

Good news for ladies who enjoy their shopping – it can get you fit! Yes, retail therapy is the latest in a long line of fitness fads which it is claimed can fight the flab, and many women are already taking advantage of burning a few calories by pounding the streets in search of bargains.

While shedding the folding pounds, women are also shedding the fatty pounds by burning around 385 calories each week with no exercise other than a visit to the shops.

A report in OK! Magazine cited a test conducted by Debenhams which tested ten shoppers (five men, five women) armed with pedometers, and also surveyed 2,000 female shoppers in order to gain an insight into understanding the health benefits of shopping.

Debenhams found that the average women covers a distance of around 2.96 miles whenever they go to the shops, compared to the average man’s 1.5 miles. Over the course of a year, women would walk the equivalent distance of a jaunt between London and Hull.

It was also found that women also spend much longer browsing, with an average of 2.5 hours compared to mens’ mere 50 minutes.

Shoutingindigital can, however, confirm that the additional distance travelled by women is actually that distance between the first and last shops women visited. The additional distance covered can be attributed to when women decide to go back to the first shop to buy the item they saw there in the first place.

The recent national postal strike causes a huge slowdown in the growth of online sales of goods according to a study by IMRG Capgemini.

Sky News reports that the firm’s e-Retail Sales Index show that in the last week of October – when strike action was at its largest – online sales dropped by 5%, leading to a £53million fall in sales.

The IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index showed British shoppers spent £4.2 billion online in October, an increase of almost 12% on the same month last year.

Consumer confidence in Royal Mail’s ability to deliver goods bought online was a major factor in October’s e-retail sales values and volumes decline but with the threat of further industrial action averted in the run-up to Christmas, it is hoped that shoppers’ doubts and concerns can be alleviated.

Mike Petevinos of Capgemini said: “E-retailers must ensure they heed the October warning signs and act to reassure consumers that orders will be delivered in time for Christmas.

“With consumer confidence restored, e-retailers can get on with the real challenge of convincing consumers to spend online and resist the temptation to wait even longer for last minute discounting on the high street.”