Best Buy to staff store with zombies

By Kevin Hoffman Tue., Feb. 3 2009 at 5:59 PM

You think retail is dead? Best Buy is actually putting zombies in one of its stores. The shambling undead are not a statement about the condition of consumer confidence, but rather an ill-conceived promotion for the upcoming videogame, Resident Evil 5.

I could make all kinds of jokes about the "walking dead" in light of the threat of layoffs, but I won't because I have a friend that works at Best Buy. In any case, it's clear that the retailer is innovating at one of its stores, though lucky for us its far from the Minnesota Mothership:

On March 13, the Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania Best Buy will convert part of their store into a haunted house. They will be dressing up employees as zombies, turning their bank of televisions to eerie no-signal snow and even putting a person in a potato-sack mask and giving them a chainsaw, all to celebrate the launch of Resident Evil 5... and maybe sell a few copies of the game.

"You want to get away from midnight releases, that's stale, that's old," said Dave Partenio, supervisor of gaming and media at the store. "We want to have a premiere game party for this game."