Marketplace Morning Reports' new Skin in the Game series explores what we can learn about

money and careers from the $300 billion video game industry. Plus, here how an Oakland-based

program helps young people get the skills they need to break into this booming industry.

Listen to Skin in the Game and more from the Marketplace Morning Report wherever you get your

podcasts. A battle of two behemoths has shaped how we shop. From American public media,

this is Marketplace Tech. I'm Megan McCarty-Karino.

Amazon and Walmart. Walmart and Amazon. Separately and together, these mega retailers have

transformed how Americans transact for better or worse. It's the subject of a new book.

Winner sells all. Amazon, Walmart, and the battle for our wallets.

Author Jason Del Rey says, in recent years, the two have become almost mirror images with Walmart

chasing online sales while Amazon opens physical stores. Maybe when I started covering these

companies 10 years ago, I would have laughed at someone if they talked up the idea of Amazon,

opening stores. Over the last five to six years, they have. As many people probably know,

they did acquire Whole Foods back in 2017. I think that has not gone as well as they would have

hoped. I shop at Whole Foods but not super regularly, but I check in a lot because I cover these

companies. I don't know that the experience is better than it was pre-Amazon and there's been

other struggles there. They've then gone out and opened bookstores, which some people thought was

either ironic or awful or some people thought it was cool, I guess. They ended up shutting those

down last year. They opened Amazon fresh. Their own grocery chain that was mass brand

higher end brands like Whole Foods. They've now paused that expansion. They also had some funky stores

called Four Star, which were a mix of a bunch of stuff found on Amazon that had ratings of,

you guessed it, Four Star is at least. I think they went into the space thinking they can use

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