Let me tell you why, as I managed retail for a long time. This shift came about 2 or 3 years ago, I believe led by Walmart and Target.
Many times, certain items will be cheaper in the store than online for Black Friday in order to encourage people to go out to stores. You can even see it on their tabs in the paper ($24.99/in-store $17.99)
It's an attempt to keep brick and mortar stores alive and relevant, to help them fight back against the fact that you can essentially do anything you want from your phone or PC now(groceries, etc) with as little as 1 day wait time. In areas where Amazon Prime has Prime Now active, as little as an couple of hours.
As the generation before many of us rides off into the sunset, the shopping landscape that we will partake in and especially our children, will be radically different than most anything we have ever known growing up.
Think about--Toys R Us, Radio Shack, Circuit City, Sears, K-Mart. These are just a few names, once synonymous with retail culture now gone or all but.
I will also take this time to tell you that I know, from an inside source at my old employer, that GameStop plans to indeed close over 2,000 stores in the upcoming year. This is in addition to the 200 or so this year. Almost 50% of their market footprint. Things are not very good there.
