PlayStation 3 -- a Bust or a Boon for Sony?

From ABC NEWS : "Though images of electronics stores adorned with snaking lines of pimply faced teenagers, desperate parents and eager technophiles searching for an elusive Sony PlayStation 3 blanketed the Internet before the holidays, the high-tech, high-priced video game console may no longer be so hard to find.
I certainly haven't been to every store in the country, but anecdotally it's an issue," said Brian Crecente, editor in chief of gaming blog Kotaku.com. Crecente photographed a large stack of PS3s for sale at a major U.S. electronics retailer just after the holidays.

A visit to eBay finds the PlayStation 3 selling for a retail price of $500 for a 20-gig model and $600 for 60-gigs, a stark contrast to the $2,000 plus they went for before Christmas. As of this writing, Best Buy's Web site shows that the high-end model is available on order..."

[Gears]

MAn Sony are screwed big time LOL. They will leave the console market, just like Sega. Sony is getting their A$$ handed to them on a silver platter with Wii60 inscribed on it. Hell I will send Sony a tombstone reading, PS3 laid quietly to rest after having the sh!t kicked out of it by WII60!

[Gears]

It may be too early to predict a winner in the next generation console war, but that doesn't keep some experts from speculating.

"The "next gen" war has only just begun, but from the early skirmishes, things are looking pretty good for Microsoft," said Davison. "Nintendo had a good holiday season, but it has a lot to prove."

Crecente, who believes Sony's PlayStation 3 is a powerful system that's capable of offering a great experience, agreed with Davison's assessment.

"I would say Microsoft [will be the winner]," he said. "Sony is not winning — that's easy to say — there have been so many missteps. Nintendo has a tremendous amount of buzz, but Microsoft has really taken advantage of the year's head start."

But Gartenberg, who believes the PS3 is off to a great start, said the market may be big enough that there doesn't need to be a winner — everyone could win.

Microsoft will win! The 360 is trendy and cool like th Ipod.

[GAMER_4_Life]

I think playstation is a good system.Now im a gamer and not a fanboy.I like the console but dosnt like sony.They handle things very strange u know.
I said it befor and I will say it now.If they have releasd 2 consoles,One with BR and one with out.Im sure they could find a way to make games work for both.U cant force PPL to buy things they dont need.Many are gamers and dosnt know anything about HB movies.My opinion is:Who will pay 200 dollars or more in some countries for somthing they dont need,dont care or dont know anything about it??

[power of Green]

Video games suck there for people with too much time on their hands, it you were offended by my comment you're a fanboy. J/K. You Sony fans can dissagree with all the 360 fans comments you wan't it doesn't change the fact PS3's in deep doo doo. have a nice day.

[r1000]

I love how people hear bad news and then put LOL... like thats really great news for them... Get a life losers... As if they had stock in Microsoft....

Stupid teenagers...

[astroboy2k5]

As a playstation owner im not worried right now.

- As of today PS2 continues to outsell the 360. When God of War 2 comes out its going to sell alot of games and continue to make a profit for sony.

- PSP continues to sell WELL, clearly not as good as nintendo but, thats ok.

Bottom line is that if the playstation 3 doesnt sell in March then i will be worried. But, right now it could be that people are waiting.

Clearly, PS3 wont sell 100 million but, i still think they will do better or just as good as xbox. In order for xbox to outsell PS3 they have to do better in Japan.

[FamoAmo]

My local Gamestop has had the shipment of PS3's for about a week now and I asked them if people have been buying them and he told me the HD DVD for the 360 has sold more than the ps3 console.. I thought that was kinda sad. I guess thats what happens when you make a game console and say its 1st purpose is for movies and games 2nd.. #6 I just wanted to say JAPAN is the has been.. US and UK are the new kids on the block along with Asia and whoever does best in these markets will dominate the game war.

[ASSASSYN 36o]

Where are all those fanboys whom were stating before launch how the PS3 was going to dominate...? Your silent now! I saw this coming and so did alot of people. Because we are not guilable like sony fanboys. Bear wittness to the death of a system.

[r1000]

LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL ASS ASS YN36 that make me laugh so much...

LOL LOL LOL LOL

[grifter024]

HAHA LOL i like how abc news thinks we are all "pimply faced nerds" wow thats really arrogant of them dont you think hahahhehe

[tk]

PS3 will dominate... The rumors was before launch that people are not interested, then ir would flop because of low production, and now apparently - they are "sitting on shelves"... yeah right... All from anonymous posters claiming to work at shop x y or z.

Hey... I own three different shops, and we have two thousand XB360's sitting in the back room for two years now, and no takers.... heck we could not get rid of it even when we tried to give them away with every torch sold....

Oh yeah... and my buddy working at the other shop said the same thing....

Come on... taking a snapshot of a pile of PS3's two minutes before the shop opened and then claiming that it was standing for "weeks" is really really lame. Give the shop name, location, contact details...

And this from Kotaku... who will claim any kind of BS like PS3's burning houses down as news... get real. It seems like some of these sites get paid per article of unconfirmed BS that they can post. "Anecdotal evidence". Yeah right... a buddy of a buddy of an aunt whose son has a buddy in a shop told me that they had twenty PS3's since launch and that no one bought them since launch... Yeah right...

[Grown Folks Talk]

guess i'll add my 2 cents. i worked at the gamestop in bellevue, ne for a couple of years as the assistant manager. store #2844. phone # [phone]. i still have friends that work at that store as well as other gamestop/eb stores. all of which tell me they have been getting ps3s returned left and right, and that they do stay in the store longer than expected. i was just at wal-mart tonight and saw 2 60 gigs sitting there with plenty of people playing demo units and looking around, yet not 1 person even asked about them. i'm not trying to say the ps3 won't be a big seller, or that it will fail. i know it won't fail, and that it will sell very well. it's just not right now for some reason(probably mostly price and lack of exclusives at the moment). now because something is happening in 1 place doesn't mean it's happening everywhere. however, just because it might not be going on where you live also doesn't mean it's not going on somewhere else. i know you'll probably just come back and claim i'm lying, but i provided what you want. the particular store, the phone number, and the managers are ryan, ryan, and lee. my name is joe. feel free to give them a call.

[astroboy2k5]

Honestly, Its not that hard to find a PS3. Like i said before it could be that people are waiting for better games to come out. It could also be that there are still good games coming out for the PS2.

The launch line-up for the PS3 wasnt that good but, they have a really good lineup coming next year.

Anyways, In the end the games will decide the winner, its too early to tell.

[MicroGamer]

Around the bigger cities you probably won't find many sitting on store shelves, but in other places that aren't so densely populated, that is where you are likely to see stockpiles. I haven't see a PS3 sitting on shelves in my area, but at the same time, I have never actually seen anyone buying anything PS3 related whenever I have been in Gamestop or Best Buy or anyplace else. So although people may be buying consoles in my area, they certainly aren't buying much else or else I should have seen at least one person buying something with PS3 on the box since launch day.

[Jak4ever]

There is no doubt in my mind (And i must admit that Sony had me MEGA sold on the Ps3, a year ago.)

But Sony REALLY has dropped the ball this time
The Ps2 is the best console EVER made, but MS is still proving that they have learned from the past, and any SONY fan who doesnt at least acknowledge the jitters at seeing PS3 in stores (less than a month after launch) is lying to themselves. At this point I wouldnt sell my Xbox 360 to get a ps3, and certainly not a Wii.

It looks over for Sony right now. If Sony removes the Blu-ray player.. man o man that would be it, an indirect acknowledgement from sony that they have failed.

Sony had better hope that Mass Effect tanks.

[PS360PCROCKS]

its true i have seen them at target,gamestop,eb games, wal mart, best buy, and online at best buy...i never saw one 360 anywhere for months and months

[astroboy2k5]

Its not over for sony, give me a break.
-Was it over for the original xbox
(according to some websites 21 million sold worldwide)

-The 360 is currently selling at a slower rate then the original

Yes, its probably impossible for the PS3 to match what there previous systems have done. But, lets say they go from 100 million to 70 million they will still be ahead of the 360.

All these articles are stupid and pointless. You cant comment on any of the systems untill some serious exclusive titles come out. Like Halo, God of War, Final Fantasy.

As of now there isnt any reason to buy a PS3. Resistance is a good game but, it is a little over rated

[slugg]

I work at a Gamestop in Spokane, WA. We have two stores in the same mall. (I would post phone numbers, but since our DM has his office in one of the stores it probably isn't a good idea.) Anyway, in the last two weeks we have had 3 times as many PS3's returned as we have sold. One store had six returned in one day. People who bought them to sell and couldn't sell them. The problem with returned PS3's was getting so bad, we asked Corporate if we could refuse to take them back (Gamestop has a no-return policy on systems, open or not-- we only have been taking PS3's back because of 1. Our Christmas return policy, which ends Jan 15th, and 2. We thought we could re-sell a brand new, just-released console! All Gamestop and EB Games stores in town (a total of 6) have PS3's sitting in the back room. People don't even ask if we have any for sale, now, while before Christmas we got dozens of call every day. The Wii, however, is another story. Every shipment sells out as soon as we get it, and extra wiimotes and nunchucks are impossible to find. 360's still sell at a steady rate, but systems, accessories, and great games for the 360 are easy to find. What does it all mean? Not sure, but I think a lot of it has to do with price, for the general public, and blu-ray, HD confusion for some hardcore early adopters who HAD planned on buying a PS3 around this time after the Christmas rush had passed. With no HDMI (or component!) cable in the box, and no internal scaler, people who wanted to buy a PS3 to take advantage of HD gameing AND Blu-ray might be investigating things a little more before they jump in (pardon the pun.) Both Blu-Ray and HD DVD are doing...OK, but not phenomenal. In the 360's case, you can buy the HD DVD add-on if you want to, and it will show HD movies in 1080p, 1080i, and 720p. The PS3 forces Blu-Ray on you, and won't work at 720p, won't work with some tv's, won't scale, etc. If Blu-Ray tanks (although not likely), Sony is in BIG trouble. If HD-DVD sales start to slide, MS can release a Blu-Ray or (more likely) Combo add-on drive. Since the whole HDMI compliance thing has been pushed back to 2012, HDMI is a non-issue for Microsoft, as they will have their new system (the Xbox 1080?) out by then. Sony's biggest problem, however, seems to be their own arrogance. They actually said things like "people will work longer hours to afford one" "We are selling it too cheap!" and "It will sell just because it says Playstation." They got blinded by the success of the PS2, and thought their lead was unsurmountable. (Sony, uh, remember what YOU did to Nintendo?) They can still turn things around with some amazing, exclusive games, but for now the price and confusion surrounding the PS3 are chilling sales dramatically.

[ironwolf]

Still had at least one of last weekend's PS3s today (Saturday). They didn't have that many to start with last weekend.

[Mr Murda]

I live in a Central Illinois town with a population of 80,000. When new consoles are launched we don't ever get big shipments, and the shipments for the next few months are still small. Wii's are impossible to find and I was one of the lucky ones to catch a shipment at Best Buy as they opened. 360's are selling well, but it's hard to tell cause fairly big shipments come in regularly (maybe 12 Premiums and 6 Cores per shipment).

PS3's on the other hand are readily available at this point. Since the week before Christmas there were PS3's at every store I was at (Circuit City, Best Buy, Gamestop (2 locations), GameCrazy, Target, Wal-Mart (2 locations)). I've seen as many as 5 sitting at Best Buy, which like I said doesn't receive that many anyway per shipment. I've also physically seen 2 NEW PS3's being returned at Best Buy.

I don't know what it's like in other towns, but from what it sounds like it is selling very slow except in the big cities.

[HaKeRsCanRotINHEL]

the PS3 its the company behind it! Thats where the problem LIES...

[MicroGamer]

it all comes down to Blu Ray. DVD was already established as the successor to VHS by the time PS2 was released. There was no risk or backlash to Sony for including it, because most people were already making the switch, or planning to make the switch. DVD was clearly the superior technology and everyone could see the difference and there was no competing standard. With Blu Ray and HD-DVD, not everyone has decided which one they want to support yet. Nobody wants to support the wrong one and get stuck with dozens of discs the equivalent of Betamax tapes that they can't get rid of. By including Blu Ray in the PS3, they are forcing people who may not be ready to commit to a new format into the arena against their will. Also, where it was clear that DVD was superior to VHS, it isn't clear to many that the two new formats are better than DVD, or at least not so much better that they are willing to dump their existing movie player and DVD collection. Sony could easily have put a DVD player in PS3 and been on the market sooner at a more competitive price, but they had to try to force their new format onto the market. The DVD forum had already chosen HD-DVD as the DVD successor. Sony went ahead with Blu Ray out of spite. Like a little baby throwing a tantrum and now all of us have to listen to Sony the wailing little brat throwing a hissy fit because their format wasn't officially adopted as the new standard. You know what happens to brats who won't shut up?? They get spanked. And Blu Ray is going to get spanked hard by HD-DVD.