Four Days Before Christmas...Is PS3 Demand Already Dead?
Player One Podcast
English - December 21, 2006 06:58 - ★★★★★ - 488 ratingsVideo Games Leisure Games 3ds playstation switch video game games nintendo vita wii xbox Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
At this time last year, if you were looking to buy an Xbox 360 as a
holiday gift, you'd be looking at paying at least double the system's
$400 price for a Premium Pack. The things were in hot demand. Yet this
year, with the PS3 launch...the successor to the #1 game brand for the
last 10 years, systems are...well, very easy to find. A quick look at
the Craigslist listings in the Houston area and you see systems going
for very little if ANY mark-up. One post reads that if no one calls to buy his 20GB at $550 (at cost, more or less) it's going back to the store. There are several 60GB systems going for as little as $650 -- again, at cost.
So, what the hell happened? For all intents and purposes the PS3 should
still be in hot demand. It's only four days before Christmas, you'd
figure that people would certainly pay $25-50 above cost for the
machine... no?
Why I bring all this up is that a friend of mine bought a 60GB PS3
about three weeks ago at a Best Buy here in Houston, thinking he'd
resell it on eBay and at least get enough profit out of it to buy a
Wii. Fair enough. So tonight I asked him how it went, since I hadn't
heard yet. He laughed and told me he still had the system. He put it up
on eBay, the winning bid was $715 (barely above the $650 cost to him
and not enough to get a Wii from the profit). The winner decided not to
pay. Afterwards my friend listed it on Craigslist for $750 -- got NO
e-mails. Instead he's just going to return the system to Best Buy and
get his money back. I did consider buying it off of him, but then I
thought...I really don't need a PS3 right now. As I've said before,
Resistance is the only game I'm even halfway interested in (because
it's Insomniac), and that alone is just not that compelling a reason to
get one. Plus I'm still not done with Zelda, Gears of War, Rainbow Six
Vegas or Phantasy Star Universe for the two new-gen consoles I already
own.
I wonder what this means for PS3. Clearly, if demand for it has died
this quickly it can't be a good sign--can it? Granted I still haven't
seen any PS3s in stores, but I haven't been looking all that hard
either. Another slightly bad sign--in the latest EGM they've put
together something very similar to the Xbox vs. GameCube feature Greg
and I have been talking about on the podcast. Except it's PS3 vs. Wii.
And the unanimous winner is the Wii.
How are the PS3s selling near you?
- CJ