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Sony Playstation 2 for Over $1k [Updated -- $5K]
The Alpha noted this, but several others have told us as well that ebay is hosting auctions for several playstation 2's... some of which have broken a grand. Nice little profit margin there ;) Conspiracy theorists propose that many folks (Jon Doe, Retailers, or Sony!) are raking in huge profits on the things. Hope the system is worth it. [Updated 27 Oct. 2:15 GMT by timothy:]
the3dmaniac writes: "I was just looking at the auctions for PS 2 systems at ebay and found this very disturbing sight. The craze has gone overboard, time to make some cash while it is still hot." Whoah -- check that price. Errr, so this would be the "premium" gasoline, sir?
Some poor shmuck better enjoy their 2 weeks of coolness..
this one sold for $14,999.00.
more proof that all the wrong people have money to waste.
Emotion Engine issues? Developers slow to code for it? I think not. I think this 'shortage' is a calculated move of Sony's part to cause a frenzy. We've seen it before: Furbys, Cabbage Path Dolls, etc.
:-)
Believe me, Sony knows what they're doing, and they're loving every minute of this. I'll bet you there's a warehouse full of PS2s sitting somewhere in Japan, waiting to trickle into the US market from now until Christmas.
Happy shopping!
It used to be that a consoles success was gauged by its first day sales...
Then by how many people were mugged for their new consoles on the way home on the first day of sales...
Now the mark of a consoles success is relative to its grey import value on Ebay?
Truly the internet has brought about a paradigm shift in console gaming....
grab your ankles bitch
"these ps2s are being sold at many times their
retail price! Somebody, possibly the person
selling them, must be making a profit!"
K.
-
-- Proud descendant of semi-nomadic cattle-herders.
I just don't understand how demand for these things can be that big!
Seriously, are there really people that think the game quality is going to be instantly better just because you can push a few more pixels. I just (and I mean just a couple of weeks ago) bought a N64 and will probably now consider buying the old Playstation (as the price will surely drop like a rock now). The older games are far more plentiful and there are a few that are even enjoyable to play. I find that in the first year or two of a new system there are very few games that are actually fun to play.
Most of the games I see now are completely ridiculous when it comes to game-play. Sure, I suppose the system is great if you are really into all that "I have the latest available toy" sort of thing, but I think if you waited you would save yourself a bundle and get more enjoyable games to boot.
Now I'm off to play the Bard's Tale II on my old trusty Apple IIgs (it's still more enjoyable than about 90% of the games I've seen in the past few years).
Bite my yammer.
Check it out, every high bid has been made by the same person who has zero feedback. Wonder what Ebay's policy is on this.
Its about 8 or 9 years old, running a overclocked 8086 chip with not one, but two 5.25 inch disk drives! It has a 300 baud modem and I'll toss in the 12 inch monocrome monitor for free! Come on people, you'll kick yourselves later.
Now I'll just wait for the 15 grand.
The PlayStation, like most consoles, is a loss leader. Sony isn't making a lot of money selling them, in fact, it's highly likely that they are losing a small amount in the US. In Britain, the PS2 will cost about $100 more, but then the market's smaller, and a lot of additional costs are higher.
However, Sony has a monopoly on selling licenses for the PS[2]. If you want to code for it, first you need to fork over a lot of cash for a development kit (ie. tens and tens of thousands of dollars), which in effect is little more than a Linux box with funky things thrown in.
Then, you need to give Sony lots more cash. In fact, they make money with every game sold, because they do per-copy licensing. So, for doing *absolutely nothing*, Sony gets money from the publishers of PS2 games. Sorry, correction: For allowing them to develop for PS2. In return for allowing them to develop for PS2, Sony gives developers binding contracts which often ban them from developing for other competing systems. Ever wonder why Electronic Arts games don't get published on the Dreamcast? EA didn't want to piss off their moneycow, PS and now PS2.
MS may be portrayed as the evil empire, but they have nothing on Sony or Nintendo. Hell, you should have seen the lawsuits flying when software makers dared to try to publish games for Nintendo/Sony without getting licenses...
Imagine that: Microsoft suing you as a coder because you wrote a game for Windows - without giving them money. Most of Sony's profits in the last few years or so were from PS-related licensing. They didn't make any money from the hardware.. but raked it in when it comes to software.
Reality check, guys.
Alex T-B
St Andrews
There's quite enough talk about the supposed worthlessness of the system, terrible quality of the launch games, conspiracy by Sony etc. That's boring. How bout my "getting the PS2" story, and some actual reviews instead ;-)
;-) The graphics engine rendered a huge landscape that stretched off in the distance with no draw-in and a tiny bit of LODing on the objects; Overall it looked very nice, and the physics engine made for some great dune-buggy-style driving.
---
The story:
I live and work in Dallas TX (I'm a game developer with Ensemble Studios.) For a few weeks now, a couple of us around the office have been setting up plans to get the PS2 the day it came out. Our plan as of yesterday was to camp a Best Buy, which was supposedly getting the largest shipment of units (~150.) We decided that 4am was a good time to show up (6 hours in advance of opening.) Yesterday, however, at about 4:20, I started thinking that perhaps there were some 24 hour places that might put the system on sale at midnight, so I called around.
4:30, and the first 24 hour Walmart I call tells me, "We've got 18 systems in, and we're putting em on sale tonight at 12:01. There's already 5 people in line." 5 minutes later, and my pal Rob and I were already in the car speeding through traffic to get there (We figured that a 7 hour wait in the evening was better than a 6 hour wait at 4 in the morning.)
We arrive at approximately 4:55. As we're pulling up to the store, we watch a group of 4 kids literally bolt across the parking lot and run into the store. I know what they're here for. I tell Rob to park and I jump out of the car and enter the store, heading for the electronics section. As I walk up, I see a number of people looking around for a place to line up. I search for the nearest clerk and ask him where the line for the Playstation 2 is, he looks confused and intimidated and tells me to wait there. Not content with that answer, I track down another clerk - this one points me to the layaway section in the back of the store. As I round the corner into the layaway halway, I finally see the line. It looks like at least 30 people to me. CRAP. Quick tally. Wait - 15 people! Woo! Rob comes rushing in 30 seconds later. We've got spots 16 and 17. Five minutes later and the line is full.
The next 7 hours were filled with mixed games of Magic, talking about game design ideas, Gameboy playing, attempts by various people to sneak their way into the line, and a few muted threats that the cops were going to come to quiet things down if people didn't behave or parents didn't show up to accompany the minors. All in all, Walmart was very cool about the whole thing, and although they admitted to not at all expecting what happened, they handled it gracefully and even held an impromptu raffle for some 20$ gift certificates towards the purchase of the PS2 for those of us standing in line.
Finally at 11:55, as everyone was standing and a very noticeable excitement and tension was in the air, we heard a page over the intercom for "Assistance in the front." and 3 minutes later, a shopping cart filled to the brim with bright blue boxes was escorted by no less than 2 walmart managers and a couple of large stocking guys right by the line and into the back room behind the counter. The 18 were then cordoned off from the 20 or so "spectators" and parents (as well as my girlfriend Jade, who is the coolest chick in the world; she likes games and actually spent the evening playing Magic with us geeks and hanging out), and we purchased our systems one by one. I walked out of the store at about 12:20am, playstation2 in hand. =)
On the way to Rob's house after the purchase, we drove by the Best Buy we were going to camp at, just to check it out. At 12:30am, there were 36 people we counted lined up outside - 9 and 1/2 hours before the store opened.
---
The System:
After all that, we certainly had to get home right away to plug'er in. The system itself is very stylish and sleek looking. My personal preference (as well as Rob's) is that a game machine look more "fun" than the PS2 looks, but if you're preference is the cool factor, this is definitely the coolest looking console to date. The manufacturing quality appears to be as high or higher than that of the PSX. The black plastic of the case is embossed with the PS2 logo on top, and it has some very nice little touches like a rotatable PS logo on the drivebay, and a very slick blue LED power indicator. Some negatives there are a really wacked power cycling scheme that involves a seperate master switch on the back (intended to be left on always), and then a "reset" button on the front that actually activates the system, and which you have to hold down for a few seconds to power the system off. Also, there seems to be a pretty significant cooling fan in the back of the system that emits a rather loud, compared to other consoles, (though not really unpleasant) whirring noise.
Included with the system is one controller, AV cables, instruction manual and a power cable. No demo disc, and no memory card (and apparently, the (un)availability of these cards is 1 for every 5 systems sold right now!) I was suprised by the lack of demo disc - that seems to be a no-brainer marketting oportunity to me, and I was disapointed that the system came with absolutely no included software save for the firmware.
Turning on the system for the first time presents you with a slightly different opening than the Japanese PS2 systems, with a display of the PS2 line-drawing-style logo, and then a list of languages and time zones to select from. Interesting to note is that the system was aware of the date/time out of the box - it was preset at the factory. The system configuration and memory browser menus are very slick, sporting background dolby surround sounds of ocean surf, and images of blue crystal icons and cool depth-of-field effects.
The overall sound quality of the system when hooked up via the included optical jack, and set to Dolby AC3 is phenomenal - way beyond that of the other consoles I have hooked up to my system. The music in games like Madden and SSX sounds really good, and the sound effects are crystal clear and sport very smooth and loud bass. Overall I'd have to say that the game audio is movie-quality and really impressed me. The video quality (for in-game videos, such as the Armored Core intro, or the Madden Intro) is also far ahead of what other console's have to offer and was the first thing that really impressed me when we booted the games.
---
The Games:
I wasn't expecting the games themselves to be very good actually; In the past, console launches have tended to have only one (maybe two) strong games, and a bunch of shlock to fill out the launch. Rob and I had between us: Fantavision, Madden 2001, Smugglers Run, Armored Core, Midnight Club Racing, and SSX.
Overall, I was suprised and quite pleased with the quality of the games. Almost all of the titles we tried, with the exception of Midnight Club Racing, were very strong A-quality titles.
- Out of those titles, SSX and Madden are clearly the best games for the system at this time. SSX is a VERY nice looking (very fast too - 60fps) snowboarding game that is a mix between Tony Hawk (skateboarding game) and 1080 (snowboarding game.) It's all about frantic downhill action and crazy stunts, the gameplay was right on and the production quality was very high. Madden is the best looking title available on the PS2 and the production quality of that game was also remarkably high. Neither of these games had the usual rushed-out-the-door quality I would normally expect with a launch title, and none of the games had the pre-first-generation feel that I'm used to in the games that are available when a system first comes out - they were all very polished.
- Smuggler's Run was probably my second favorite game, right behind SSX, because of it's split-screen multiplayer. The CTF style capture-the-loot game is really fun, and makes me think of the PC game Tribes, except with cars
- Fantavision was a unique and fast-paced puzzle type game, that didn't appeal to me as much as a tetris clone, simply because it was lacking a bit in depth of strategy. Armored Core was a great looking FPS mech game that was fun to play and had a nice shallow learning curve - the only downside was lack of analog stick support. Midnight Club Racing seemed the weakest of the bunch to me, simply because it seemed tedious, and the graphics were not at all up to par with the rest of the group.
I can't wait to see what second generation games look like. The games I listed above leave out some very notable titles that were also available at launch such as Tekken Tag Tournament, Dead or Alive 2, and Ridge Racer V.
---
As Rob pointed out to me, your average gamer has no idea that many development houses are having lots of difficulty wrapping their brains around the PS2, those things might get some coverage in the hardcore-gamer news channels. All your average gamer knows is what he thinks is fun, and what his friends and magazines tell him is fun. I would have to say that the amount of hype and momentum to purchase the system I experienced yesterday, coupled with at least half a dozen very strong launch titles, suggests to me that sony still has great potential to lead this next generation console market. The XBox and Gamecube also have undeniably promising potential that is going to make for a very interesting playing field this coming year. =)
On my way home from Rob's, Jade and I drove by Best Buy again, and there was a line that stretched from the door, all the way around to about halfway down the side of the building. At least 60 people there at 3am. The parking lot looked as full as it does during normal hours. This Best Buy is merely one of probably half a dozen in the DFW metroplex - according to the other two guys here who actually got a system this morning (woohoo! 4 for 4!) every store they went to had a similar phenomenon.
paulb
p.s. I'm sure that some people consider the rush to get a new console the day it comes out to be pretty pointless. We all have our priorities I guess, and for me, Fun is pretty high up there on the list. The fun and excitement of this experience was way worth the 9 or so hours it took, so please don't bother to flame me for it. =)
Paul Bettner
Game Developer et al