Buzz word of the month: SKU. It stands for Stock Keeping Unit and is pronounced as a word, "skew." It's a short hand way to say "individual retail product." Actually, I've never felt a big need to use "individual retail product" in a conversation and, let's say a few months ago, neither did most of the internet. While McWhertor tells me its been in use for a while now, it seems like recently, it's EVERYWHERE. Tim Rogers over at game site Insert Credit offers this insight as to why:

So why has this acronym suddenly popped into the videogame blogosphere? Because we like feeling elite? Maybe, maybe not. Keep in mind that a lot of the guys who get interviewed by videogame blogs are not actual game developers — they're videogame PR guys, and unlike, say, movie PR guys, who more often than not have at least seen a couple dozen movies in their lives, videogame PR guys tend to come from strict retail backgrounds. Nintendo's Reggie used to manage a Pizza Hut (or something), for God's sake. Spewing "SKU" left and right is these guys' revenge for you guys' talking about mysterious things they don't understand, like "graphics" or "gameplay".

I've actually used "SKU" in a post. Back in October. A tipster in retail used it in an email — Hence my inclusion of the term. Don't think that it's just that the typically verbose Tim Rogers hates brevity — This actually seems to be a trend. Something to think about. Or not. Brian Ashcraft

On SKU [Insert Credit]

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