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The Dark Side of the PlayStation 3 Launch
An anonymous reader writes "Kotaku is running an article prompted by an email from a foreign student in Japan. The reader unveils the sad reality of the modern gaming industry. Japanese businessmen made ample use of homeless people and Chinese nationals to obtain PS3s for re-sale. There was also a large amount of pushing and shoving, some fights, and almost no police presence at the most crowded stores." From the article: "Based on my observations of the first twenty PS3s sold at Bic Camera, they were all purchased by Chinese nationals, none of whom bought any software. After making their purchase, television crews asked for interviews but all were declined. These temporary owners of PS3s would then make their way down the street where their bosses waited. After several minutes, a dozen PS3s were rounded up, as their Japanese business manager paid out cash to those who waited in line for them. I witnessed a homeless-looking Chinese man, in his sixties or seventies get paid 20,000 yen for his services and was then sent away." Update: 11/12 05:40 GMT by Z : You're right. Sony only shares a portion of the blame here. Offsides on my part.
Why is Sony getting blamed here?
A rather low way of some people getting their hands on a PS3.
Congratulations, Sony. Nicely done.
The end users who buy from these middlemen are *every bit* as guilty as Sony or the middlemen. If it weren't for these buyers, there would be no market for the middlemen.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
Congratulations, Sony. Nicely done.
Heaven forbid we blame the scalpers... or the people willing to buy a PS3 at a premium from the scalpers. Why would we do that when there is a giant corporation we can blame for the ills of society? Damn that holiday season, we are helpless against the dynamic duo: Christmas and Sony. Won't somebody think of the children (especially those who will be deprived of a PS3 this christmas?)
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
I don't see much of a problem here. The people who purchased had the money, theirs or not they should get the product. If I can afford dozens of PS3s and can afford to pay dozens of bums to stand in line and buy them, then I'll get dozens of PS3s. How can their be a law against that in a country that regards itself as free (Japan)?
I fail to see how Sony is in any way responsible.
Curse those pesky blue lasers and the factories that fail to produce them quick enough...
"Congratulations, Sony. Nicely done."
Yeah, providing jobs for the homeless. Talk about AWFUL. No one's forcing these people to buy PS3s. At any rate, blaming sony is just wrong. Blame the system, not the product.
There's not really any practical way of preventing scalping is there?
- float the price high enough to stifle demand (almost there already!)
- somehow make a PS3 un-transferrable (can you imagine the screams?)
- magically come up with more PS3s
- wait until the factories are running full-bore before starting to release any PS3s
Now, concert and sport ticket scalping is another story, but not I think relevant here.
Anyhow IMO blaming Sony for this -- or even really considering it to be a problem -- is pretty mistaken.
Some homeless guys don't get to play with their new PS3s... I'm crying my little heart out here.
Congratulations, Sony. Nicely done.
Ok, so Sony makes a product, a lot of people want it, some resort to unscrupulous tactics to get them, and somehow that's Sony's fault?
All this Sony bashing is getting ri-goddamned-diculous.
is about $170
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Why is this Sony's fault? The article mentiones that Sony held the launch with too few units and police should have been present. This may be true, but it wouldn't materially change the scalping that the poster seems to be opposed to. If police were present, then the homeless & Chinese nationals who stood in line to resell the units would simply walk down the street and into a building before engaging in the transgressions being griped about.
Let's face it... supply and demand will always rule. When there's high demand and low supply, product will always go to the highest bidder.
You know, so you don't have huge crowds like this? Charge a premium to those that want to pick it up the day it's released. No wonder Sony is loosing so much money. If there is that much demand for their product, why aren't they charging more?
... welcome our new homeless Chinese overlords.
send + more == money?
Can someone knowledgeable explain to me the Chinese National connection?
Don't get me wrong, Sony has done a lot of bad shit, and has been very arrogant when it comes to the PS3, but this kind of behavior should be attributed expressly to the consumers. Okay, one might argue that Sony created an artificial shortage (blue laser conspiracy?), but that's no reason someone has to be an asshole. It isn't a necessary product, so the fault lies almost entirely on the consumers.
Come on, Zonk. I'm pretty anti-Sony, too, but you don't need to redirect blame for something like this. There's lots of other stuff Sony has done to be called on.
-5 Troll
75% Troll
25% Flamebait
No seriously, blaming Sony?
At least blame them for something bad, 'cause I don't see offering homeless people jobs a bad thing.
Syllable 0.62 is here at last!!!
I keep hearing whining about homeless being taken advantage of, but I never see these same people try to actually give them better paying jobs, and they will gladly buy made in china goods where the workers are forced to live off subsistence wages which aren't really any better...Oh but hey it's different cause we're special, right? Not In My Backyard and Out of Sight out of Mind philosophy at it's worst. Hypocrites all of you.
Wow, just wow. Sony undersupplies units and it's their fault that other people can't behave in a civilized manner? That's ridiculous. If we're going to hold Sony accountable for individuals' behavior, perhaps we should hold the individuals responsible for Sony's decisions as well. Either scenario is equally preposterous.
Is it bad that I read that as KDE - Otaku? And on a Saturday night no less.
It's amusing to me that folks have no problem with somebody dropping hundreds of dollars on a console, but hiring homeless people to scalp them is some huge crime. Obviously the homeless guys felt taking some money to wait in a line was a better use of their time than whatever else they'd normally do--they made out here. As for the people who hired them, well...would you expect Steve Jobs to mow his own lawn? Why should he, if he can afford to pay someone else to do it. And as for Sony, like any company, they respond to incentives: in this case, fewer units = more demand. If you don't like it, change their incentives by not buying their shit.
I don't see what the big deal is.
Some homeless man will make some money, as well as the middle man. Some fan boy (sucker?) with money is willing to pay extra for having a relatively useless, in my opinion, product available to him now, instead of one month from now.
What is the problem, really?
Isn't it obvious that Nintendo's to blame? They did after all save the console market...
He's too busy organizing a Project Mayhem strike against the local Ferrari dealer.
First of all, I should note that I agree that it's you can't really blame Sony entirely for this. It's not as if they hired the homeless themselves.
That said, it's funny to see the same fanbois that criticized MS for all of the issues surrounding the 360 launch (fights, eBay profiteering, etc.), run to Sony's defense when it happens to their console launch.
You can blame both companies for just not making enough supply to meet demand, which then causes hysteria and the problems we're seeing with the PS3 launch (and 360, and PS2, and Tickle-Me-Elmo, etc.) . Although if possible, both would have vastly preferred to have many more consoles available. They just didn't want to miss the holiday season because of it. Fair enough.
-- jchenx
People making profit from a high demand for a low supply of items? Shock!
How we know is more important than what we know.
http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBids& item=330047524577
I say everyone on that list should be SHOT.
Every time there is an article about demand for some toy, someone suggests that it should be auctioned off. The usual response is that auctioning makes the company look greedy and doesn't produce as much media hype as 200 people camping out in the cold to shell out their money.
What would happen if the company auctioned off the first 10 000 units and then donated the excess to a local charity? I think that would get rid of a lot of the middlemen and produce a lot of POSITIVE publicity. Also the buyers who actually wanted the items would not have to feel guilty about funding some sketchy re-selling ring. The company could then use the auction prices as "proof" of how awesome their product is and reassure the rest of the consumers that the next shipment will be sold at a lower price.
Im not sure I'd trust a homeless dude with a $700 PS3, but if a homeless guy can make a few bucks for whatever, so what. And dont blame sony ... its supply and demand. If i had the money to blow initially, I'd buy 10 or 20 and sell em on ebay right around christmas for a hefty profit too.
How is this any different than you or me buying a PS3 and selling it on eBay? Only difference I can see is, homeless people need the money worse than we do.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
20,000 yen is not a bad sum, about $170. Though that probably doesn't go far in Tokyo, it's not to shabby for other parts of Japan.
I've always wanted to fly an airplane over a football game, say the superbowl, and drop a bunch of mixed bills into the crowd - ones, fives, tens - then count the number of fatalities in the ensuing stampede.
How much would you bet that Sony execs have a pool on the number of incidences created by their console release.
Gah, people are stupid.
If your self control is so nonexistent or your kid so spoiled (and you so whipped by them in turn) that you can't wait another month then it's your damn fault and no one else's. No one is making people buy these on ebay or making them buy them on release day. Hell, at least the scalpers and ebayers are showing intelligence and initialize so good for them.
Why is Sony being blamed for other people's mishaps & actions??
Note to editor: Your dept. of nothing-nice-to-say shouldn't make blatant accusations...
Mod points are a dangerous tool. Abuse them wisely.
But then, this is Slashdot. Perhaps Zonk really does think it is Sony's fault that some of their customers aren't nice people.
Slashdot has just jumped the shark.
Bollocks. The PS3 is not a critical or essential item (irrespective of what you might feel) and theres nothing illegal about scalping it. Its bloody unfair for most people but unfair is not the same as illegal.
Sure its going to make the PS3 a whole lot harder to get for christmas but if you wanted one that bad there was nothing to stop you from waiting in line for a week.
The homeless people and chinese nationals made a bit from it for essentially standing in line - how is that a bad thing?
This is simply the free market working and pretty much nothing could have prevented it.
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
What sound do people on rollercoasters make? Hint: it's not Xbox 360.
In a free market, if supply is much lower than demand, price should go up until demand is slightly below supply, at least if you are the one doing the selling. I mean really, if Joe is willing to buy my product for $100 and Bill is willing to give me $120 for it, what price should I set for it?
I don't see why sony doesn't jack up the price... say a 50% increase. They could still clear 100% of their inventory. Unless there are some very good business reasons for having a very rapid initial release.
And look at it this way, there are now a lot of homeless in China that have an extra 20k Y in their pockets thanks to sony. For that I would say whatever their motives the outcome is at least somewhat positive.
What stumps me is how these buyers are managing the homeless. You have to give a bum a wad of cash and watch him walk into the store and out of sight with it? There has to be some serious risk involved for the buyers. But I suppose they are thoroughly threatened before they are given the cash. Or they are escorted.
Also, not sure if my understanding of exchange rates is way off base or what, but a quick access to a currency converter says that a bum getting Y$20,000 is about US$2,500 so I wonder if maybe someone slipped a decimal place or two?
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
These Japanese businessmen should be ashamed!
How we know is more important than what we know.
At least, not as shocking as if businessmen had been using PS3s to buy homeless people.
I don't see anything necessarily wrong with this in principle; the consoles are a commodity that is sold for less than it's worth, people can and do buy 'em and sell 'em for a profit. And anyone that desperately wants the console to play games will shell out the dough, because they're suckers. And people that can't afford that are probably better off anyway, because they shouldn't need overpriced crap to make them happy. Mod me redundant, because I'm sure I'm repeating myself here.
What surprises me is that businessmen are getting into it. Even though they can probably quickly double or triple their investment selling the PS3s, there's a limited supply and lots of competition to get the units. Even if they make $1000 per unit they're spending a considerable amount of time to turn over a limited number of units. It seems to me they could make more money in the same amount of time trading stocks/bonds/commodities because the process is more streamlined and the volumes are higher. So for some kid looking for quick money it would surely be a good investment, I'm just surprised that it's worth the time of rich dudes.
Save the World
This is just like concert tickets. Bands won't charge the market price for a ticket. If they did, many hard core fans couldn't afford the tickets. The problem? While some fans will stand in line "for the passion", the difference between the sale price and the marke price creates an opportunity for profiteers.
The Band promoters, like Sony, are actually trying to do a GOOD THING by pricing their tickets below what they know the market will bear.
Alternatives? Sony prices the boxes at twice the fair price for the first two weeks of the release. Then how would you feel? Or, how about a special program for people with more money to pay a higher price and get their units earlier? That would smack of elitism too, wouldn't it?
The current situation really seems to be the best we can do so far. Were there homeless guys in the lines, sure. Are there ticket scalpers buying up tickets? Sure. I've also seen die-hard fans play "get the first click in" on Ticket Master, get their ticket, and GO TO THE SHOW at a fair price. No doubt, there will be some kids playing hookie for those PS-3s and getting them at a fair price too. Or... maybe they'll re-sell it and wait a month to get one at a fair price plus some games from their profit. After all, unlike concert tix, the supply of PS-3 is comparatively unlimited over a long enough run.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
The guy who fronts the money for the PS3s and pays the homeless folks to stand in line is taking a risk and may or may not profit.
Folks who might otherwise be begging on the streets get paid to stand in a line.
What about the people who are unable to stand in line to get their PS3s due to school or a job. Thanks to the businessman these people can obtain a PS3 as long as they are willing to pay the market price.
So look at what the market has done. It's made the PS3 available to anyone who wants one and in the process it has provided profit to both the businessman and the homeless person.
Wow, I really don't know where to begin with your post.
The Cell chip is expensive and difficult to manufacture. (Although each cell die has 7 cores, 8 are manufactured on each die in the expectation that one will fail. Post-manufacture testing finds the broken core and disables it, finds no broken cores and disables one anyway, or finds the whole chip ruined and scraps it.) That, and the expensive Blu-Ray drives are difficult to make, too.
They sell at $600 a pop. They'll go on eBay for much more than that, I'm sure. The amount of money Sony could make is limited by how fast they can produce consoles. So, do you think Sony is making consoles as fast as humanly possible, or do you think Sony has no interest in money?
And, under communism, there would be no PS3. What part of a state-run economy do you think values game consoles? Values them enough to invest millions in research and billions in retooling factories for the new tech? State run farms in Russia, China, Cuba, and Venezuela left/leave people starving. You think a system in which people lack "standard issued Mao Ze Dong [sic]" bread are going to have PS3s? Or televisions? I'm sure they'd settle for houses.
You also forget that capitalism is the reason the PS3 exists in the first place - if Sony didn't have a chance to make $bucks, do you think they'd spend years developing the console? Crawl out of your hole and show me a communist nation that even has Playstation 2s? (China ceased to be communist for all practical intents and purposes when they, shock, adopted mostly-free market capitalism as their economic system)
DATABASE WOW WOW
Presumably, these business men handed the poor Chinese nationals enough money to buy the PS3, right? Why did they just not cut and run? Isn't the price of the PS3 more than 20,000 yen? I did read the TFA, but since no one else has mentioned this point, I feel that I must be missing something.
^o^
I'm sure some (not all) of the same people who feel software should be free (as in beer, whatever that means, since I don't think I can get beer for free from Food Lion), also feel that outraged that a person actually would want to make profit off of someone else. All we are witnessing here is are individuals who understand how to make money. Whether you want to believe it or not it IS fair how they did it. There is no law (higher or otherwise) which states everything must be shared equally, and no I don't believe it should be. You keep what you can get (legally) and if others don't like it, tell them to suck it up.
As much as I take issue with Sony at times (Laptop batteries being my most current issue), this is not Sony's problem. Sony set their price. Somebody else got a better deal (be it perceived or realized). Besides, like a previous poster said, if people are willing to pay that price, then they are satisfied with it. Its a game system, not something important like water, sheesh.
Regards,
MBC1977,
(US Marine, College Student, and Proud Parent!)
Regards,
MBC1977,
I live in Japan and saw nothing like what is being discussed. Sure there might have been one or two isolated incidents, but this sounds like a guy trying to overblow the story way bigger than it was. It's interesting how Slashdot seems to have taken the line of reporting a single guy's observation as fact without questioning it.
"Update: 11/12 05:40 GMT by Z : You're right. Sony only shares a portion of the blame here. Offsides on my part."
Oh, they only share a portion of the blame? That's awfully magnanimous of you, but just exactly why should they take any blame? What should they have done? NOT sold a PS3 to someone because they looked shabby? Should they have insisted on some sort of contract that the customer signs that promises to not resell it?
This is just shameful. Honestly, did Zonk's mom used to beat him with a playstation or something? The constant Sony-bashing is just insane. And it's not like you have to look real far to find something they actually DID that was wrong.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
Buying on eBay just perpetuates the problem. The secondary market here only exists if people allow it to.
There are sites specifically built to counteract this secondary market crap like playstationfinder and ps3seeker and a bunch of others. http://www.playstationfinder.com/ is a rapid fire subscription service that tracks online suppliers and their current stock status. Use it. Love it. Buy retail.
Oh wait, yes i did.
Anyone who didn't see this coming must have been living under a rock.
"No, no, no, don't tug on that! You never know what it might be attached to."
Next time, it would be a better idea to presale it.
Sony could have had an online auction in which people could pre-buy it. It wouldn't come out until it comes out, but the people pre-buying it would proceed to pick it up at a store they would have chose when they won the auction.
This eliminates people buying it only for reaping a huge profit of reselling it. This eliminates the need to wait in line outside a store to be the first to get it. This gives Sony more profit, and can benefit the stores by still giving them their share since someone will still have to pick it up at the establishment.
I fail to see how Sony shares ANY of the blame for this. Zonk is a biased fuckwit piece of shit, and I'm sick of reading triping garbage about Sony every fucking day. ZONK: WE DON'T NEED THIS SHIT. Leave your biased fucking garbage at home, you fucking tool.
Why is this bad? A homeless man just made 180 bucks and someone gets a PS3 and doesn't have to wait in line to get one. Yes they will pay more but if you don't want to wait until February when the stores start dropping prices, too bad.
---- aut viam inveniam aut faciam
How else could high demand be cast as something negative?
Oh the PSU is rated for many Watts big!
Oh the bandwidth for copying VRAM back into system RAM is slow!
Oh the controller doesn't vibrate!
I'm going to make sure I buy the most expensive PS3 and never ever buy a Wii even if LucasArts releases a light saber game. I hate you fucking Nintendo and MS fanboys. You're like the fucking Republicans and I'm going to vote Democrat, not because I like the Democrats, but because you suck so bad! I want your system to fail because I hate you as a person.
Eat me,
Anonymous Coward
I fail to see a valid point in this. That increased demand doesn't generate more money for them. At least, not directly. The press coverage might serve as free advertising and help generate more hype. However, I doubt that Sony artificially constricted supply in order to increase demand. If they could've shipped more boxes, I'm pretty sure they would have.
Release enough consoles for everyone goddammit! Is it so hard? Plan ahead a few months and ship enough so that everyone who wants one can have one so this console scalping doesn't become viable. I for one am sick and tired of console manufacturers using shortages as a marketing scheme. Shortages should be a mistake, not something intentional. I will not be buying anything sony, and if there is a shortage of Wiis the first one I buy will be used as will all the games I purchase so Nintendo won't see any profits from me at all.
I was there and I saw this! I took some pictures, see the chinese dudes walking away with two in each hand! http://wiz.cx/pics/ps3rush.jpg
You'd at least expect a bit of impartiality coming from the submissions. Not even sure why this was posted, other than to satiate the anti-sony fanboys who've set up camp on Slashdot.
And I encourage anyone to mod me flamebait or troll. Doing so only reinforces what I already said in the subject title.
Ugh, yeah... Sony's creating an artificial scarcity to lower their shipments to be way below demand rather then sell out of 500k or more units at launch. That whole blu-ray component shortage was just a fake excuse. It's a vast conspiracy that includes other blu-ray manufactures. Because selling less units then they can make is good for business.
Hmmm... Pie...
So they offered a homeless guy 20,000 yen, about $140 to stand in a queue for them.
Chinese nationals wouldn't be in Japan without a student or working visa.
Sorry, don't see the problem.
High demand + low supply should mean high price. Instead, Sony takes a loss on every console. It's the next Sony stock holder meeting that should have people pushing and shouting, and demanding why Sony decided to burn away millions in profits.
You think that what these people are doing for a PS3 is bad? You should see what people do for little green slips of paper! The only people that could be blamed here are the people that are cheating the system. It was designed so everyone would have a fair shot at getting a PS3. It's also abusing the homeless' situation but of course they ARE paying the people. I won't complain about that. I don't know if they got what their time was worth but I'm sure that 20,000 Yen is still a lot more than they are used to and that can't be a bad thing. Sony is innocent... Course that is unless you think that the people that made the Tickle Me Elmo's was evil too?
Just sayin...:)
/. doesn't come out from Microsoft astrosufers. Seeing slashdotter's sentiment about Sony evil side, it is far too easy. :)
p.s. yeah, I trolled. I just start to wonder isn't that constant Sony bashing on
p.s.s. consoles are dangerous, they are making you jealous and fanboyant, and all that stuff
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
They don't "throw them away." There are several cores manufactured onto the die of one CPU. A redundant core is built onto the die due to high fail rates - the cell uses seven cores, but eight are built onto the chip because at least one is expected to fail.
So, they disable the broken core. Or cores. Or an unbroken core. A chip with all 8 cores functional will be sold for "high-grade, scientific purposes", a seven-core system will be used in the PS3, and a chip with 6 cores will be sold for miscellaneous, crap, embedded purposes. Go back to your Wikipedia.
But, yes. Sony doesn't want to throw $R&D away. So, they're trying to market their tech elsewhere. IBM would be pretty happy with it, too.
DATABASE WOW WOW
This does not make sense. You have the give the homeless the money upfront, they presumably don't have the 50,000 yen. What is to stop them from taking the money??
nothing
F4rm3r5!!!!111!!1!
...is that there was a great lack of actual game-playing customers at the event. Now, they could have been simply outnumbered by the scalpers, but it seemed like an actual game-playing customer could not be easily found. If you want to blame Sony for anything in this article, that would be about the only thing.
The end users who buy from these middlemen are *every bit* as guilty as Sony or the middlemen.
Which is to say, guilty of exactly nothing. Guilty of giving a little bit of paying work to homeless people. Anybody thought to ask the homeless people what they thought of the deal? No that would make too much sense.
What a stupid troll article, the only interesting thing is how many responders took the bait uncritically.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Sony could perhaps auction some of them to reduce the market size for the Scalpers.
I don't think they can raise the price for all of them because of the bad press it would generate but they could retain a reasonable portion and auction them off.
They could donate the additional profit to charity to avoid being accused of gouging people themselves and the auction and (presumably ludicrous) maximum price would have additional promotional value.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Seriously, how is Sony to blame for this IN ANY WAY?
The retail establishment clearly did not prepare for the launch properly, and was clearly unable to control the mob that gathered. They should have requested police prescense as soon as they saw the line was starting to become excessively large (when a single file line turns into a 10 people standing next to each other file line, its time to call the cops).
Sony did not ask rich Japanese men to pay poor/homeless Chinese people $200 to basically hang out in a line and buy a console from a store (pretty good deal, I'd do it, especially if I was homeless). It's not like the Chinese were being asked to dance naked and pleasure themselves. If anything, the rich Japanese guys who paid them to stand in line were doing them a FAVOR.
I worked in retail consumer electronics through two generations of hardware launches (PS1 to PS2) and I can tell you that this shop was totally unprepared for the launch. You can see maybe like, one , two employees tops (we had a quarter of our staff of 40 for PS1, and over half for PS2), we had requested two uniformed police officers almost a month in advance for crowd control (and we got them, of course), and the second time around (For DC/PS2/Xbox/Xbox360), we waited til around 7am and handed out vouchers to people who were lined up, guaranteeing them a console if they returned to the store before noon and presented the voucher. Best Buy did the same thing when I went there on GameCube's launch day to get a GC for myself. They handed out vouchers a bit after 7am; that way, NO LINE, NO MESS
I hate Sony just as much as most of you; but stop trying to pin the blame on them when they have absolutely NO REASON to shoulder any of the blame.
You can't stop people from paying other people to buy them PS3s. What are you going to do, kick all the Chinese out of the line? Granted, in Japan, that really wouldn't be an issue (for all you Japanophiles who are unaware or in denial, Japanese are EXTREMELY racist, particularly towards Chinese, among others), but you can't just go kicking people out of line when they've been there all night.
Further, the Japanese as a whole are very passive, and thus I'm not surprised that nothing was done about the cutting, but, come on. Once it started getting THAT out of hand, SOMEONE (if anything, the employees) should have done something.
As you can see, plenty of places to lay the blame, but I haven't mentioned Sony.
Why?
BECAUSE IT'S NOT THEIR FAULT.
I work for Sony, but this post is all mine and nothing to do with them.
/. account for many years longer than I've worked for Sony, but this story has prompted me to leave the site. It's just a little bit too much unreasoning, undirected hatred directed at me from people supposedly smart enough to know better.
Sony have taken a lot of flak lately, and it's probably been mostly justified. This, however, is the shittiest smear-job I've ever had the misfortune to read on this site. I won't be returning to the site after this post, at least once this story has run its course (so if there's any replies to this I'll answer)
How in the name of Zeus's butthole does Sony bear any responsibility whatsoever for the actions of people who aren't Sony employees? Did Sony direct these people to hire the homeless? Did Sony force anyone into doing anything, in any way? If a guy kills another guy so he can steal his PS3, will it be Sony's fault for making it? Of course not, all of these suggestions are absurd. So why attempt to shoehorn Sony into this, trying to heap more hate and blame on a company which already has so much you can fairly criticize it for?
Criticize us about rootkits, about batteries, about E3 presentations or too much hype, about perceived arrogance or copying Nintendo or making PS3 too expensive or not having enough of them, or about the quality of our hardware or software. You don't even have to make it constructive criticism, if you don't want to. But please, for the love of whatever, criticize us for those things we're at least partly responsible for! The actions of completely unrelated third parties aren't our bloody fault!
Anyway, enough from me. I've had a
Game dev and music blog
The homeless man gets the equivalent to 170 bucks for successfully getting a Ps3. Meanwhile there could be dozens more homeless people in that same line that get nothing since they don't return to The Man.
For the homeless people that got their money. You call that a living? Is that a job? It's not, and it isn't solving the homeless problem, it's just shamelessly benefiting from it.
These values you find fucked up are going to become common place in the next ten years. In social psychology there is a concept called a matched reaction. Let's say group x keeps on pushing crazy agenda y for a number of years. You are going to get another group pop up who is sick of crazy agenda y and will come up with a emotionally matching agenda.
We've have the neocons blast on for the last eight years with an extremist ideology. What you are witnessing is the birth of a leftist matched reaction. The right have their terrorist boogeyman and the left have their government 9/11 conspiracy. The right have their out of control capitalism whilst the left have their out of control anti-american, anti-business agenda.
It's the same with values. Get used to it. The next ten years is going to be an extreme left matched reaction to the current agenda. Society will end up hating them as much as we hate bush and his cronies at the moment. Then the circle will be complete and we'll start again.
to stand in line and buy for us those PS3 when it comes out
Some stores in Japan apparently used a lottery system with those customers whom were waiting in line. The "winners" were allowed to buy a PS3.
That would make it much less practical to pay some bums to sit in a queue for a week...
Personally, I'd modify the system so that everyone in the queue paid for their machine before the lottery was taken, the winners getting a PS3 and the loosers getting an Xbox 360 with Gods of War.
Either way, everyone's happy.
Nintendo DS Lite had made the same situation in Japan before half the age, too.
A coworker of mine wanted a PS3. When a local pre-sale came up he found himself at the head of the line. He ended up getting one of the 22 available pre-sale tickets. After seeing the supply/demand at work he put it up on ebay and when finished it had closed at $1600.
Now, while he wanted a PS3, he gladly accepted $1000 instead. While Sony is dropping the ball on the supply side, you can't blame them for the folks with cash to spare capitalizing on the situation.
Even people that believe in pre-destiny look both ways before crossing the street.
The guy didn't claim that the article blamed the homeless. He claimed that the article painted the homeless as victims of Sony's marketing.
This is the typical comment from people who are illiterate in developing and 3rd world econmoics (not that I am implying Japan belongs to this category but it sure is imacted by it). They just love boasting about themselves and pitying the poor.
As every other post seems to defend Sony here, I have to object.
Just like Microsoft did with the 360, Sony is releasing a very small amount of consoles at a price far below the market value. Sony isn't making money now. The reason is to make the PS3 seems desirable and popular for when they release the big batch just before the hollidays. Sony _wants_ headlines about PS3s selling out quickly. And what better way to get media attention than violence?
No, I'm not saying that this is all Sony's fault, or that they are juridically responsible. But I think it is a problem when companies plan for and profit from violence at product releases.
Look at the comments.. Most of them are actually along the lines of, "I don't like much of what Sony does, but I don't see how this is Sony's fault."
/. actually getting less knee-jerk and more level-headed?!
Is it just me, or is
Seriously folks. Aside from the fistfights, which are a law-enforcement matter of protecting one individual from another (which TFP indicates they failed to do - can you say "government failure", kids?), this is a good example of capitalism helping the poor.
What else should the homeless do: sit on their duffs waiting for a government handout? And that helps them get back to work *how*, exactly?
Having them buy PS3s on behalf of somebody else who doesn't want to wait in line to do so himself is an employment of otherwise unemployed labor. The businessman who employs them is seeking to turn a profit on reselling the PS3s because the demand far exceeds the supply of them. Welcome to Econ101.
I fail to see what the generally-leftist, economically-illiterate Slashdot crowd finds wrong with this picture, except for the notion that people actually have to -- GASP! -- *work* for a living (which the majority of the Slashdot crowd, being composed of high school and college students, do not do)...
Oh, oh, wait, I get it: this enterprising businessman is somehow "evil". He's "forcing" homeless proletariat to work for him (but how, exactly? It's a voluntary transaction! The homeless wouldn't work for him if they didn't get something out of it, and he likewise would not employ them if he could not turn a profit)... At least, these are the laughably-retarded arguments I expect to see...
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
>>Questions like "When did you start lining up?" and "What games will you buy?" were left unanswered as the young man shook his head, refusing (or unable) to respond. This aint true. I was there and this is what was answered by the first guy who recevied the PS3. >When did you start lining up? From yesterday 11PM >What games will you buy? I am going to buy games at a later date. The article overall reports the situation correctly.
"If police were present, then the homeless & Chinese nationals who stood in line to resell the units would simply walk down the street and into a building before engaging in the transgressions being griped about."
I didn't know it was illegal to sell something you own in Japan, I thought the people wanted the police to be there to maintain order in the unruly line.
FRA: STFU GTFO
I thought posts were to stay on topic. All the stuff at the bottom of your comment(s) belongs in a sig file, where it can be filtered out by those of us who grow weary of your tender bio. Regards, who cares?
The /. editors must have been seriously constipated today. Slander Bezos for what is general practice, then turn around and blame Sony for selling the most advanced game machine in the world too cheaply. Honestly if those people really were homeless (and I can bet you they were not), that is probably the most lucrative and easiest job they could get!
Anyway if you want to know where all those consoles are going, they are on auction (Japanese page at Rakuten). I haven't used Rakuten myself but it seems they don't display the closing prices for closed auctions. But never worry, there are a lot of consoles on sale.. well I see about 500 bids for 15 auctions. One auction still open at time of posting includes a PS3 60GB unit with memory card adapter and 4 games.
The 18th bid has brought that up to 122,000 ($1037) it seems. Another auction has a 20GB machine and 2 software titles for 86,000 yen.. they have 8 units (or 8 homeless people according to Slashdot) and 116 bids.. the bidding started for this one at 10 yen and then Whoosh! Boy I wish I hadn't had my head in the sand! I thought (oh it will get cheaper quick) but I should have sold it on the web. Sheesh! Well this might not play U.S. titles, unless someone discovers a backdoor again.
kill all the fucking niggers
Sorry for not understanding the makeup of Japan these days, but why use Chinese people? Do they just make up the underclass and a cheap labor force, or was ther some more sinister thing going on to ship back horsepower to the 'motherland'?
The fact people were being paid to stand in lne doesnt sound in the least bit wrong to me. Its 'work' for the day. ( well, for a video game it sounds silly, but still, they did a bit of *reasonable* work and got paid.. whats the problem with that? ).
---- Booth was a patriot ----
...but where is the problem? Homeless people and Chinese nationals are 'used' by people with money to wait in line for them. Horrific thought. Almost as bad as my boss having me work for him for money. And btw: "get paid 20,000 yen for his services and was then sent away". Pardon? I might have miscalculated, but according to the yahoo currency calculator 20,000 yen are ~170$. Homeless people get $170 to stand in line for someone else? Hey, for whom can I stand in line? This article is tagged 'racism'? Ridiculous.
How does the article get tagged racist? Senseless-exploitation perhaps, but racism? Who comes up with this crap?
Is this really news?
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
It's not all sony bashing, the majority seems quite the opposite.
FRA: STFU GTFO
Is that the first PS3 customer, and most of the first batch, were not eager Sony fans, but people who had absolutely no interest in the product.
This is Japan we're talking about. The dedication of Japanese fans for what they care about is legendary, and their accomplishments are many. (example : Comic Market)
To not have them there to greet the launch of a major item of fandomness (how can you beat the PS3 in that respect ?), seeing them beaten to the line by hired people, is disturbing. Profoundly.
Microsoft does exactly the same thing. It's in their interest for people to be lining up, generating free advertising, so they release an initial trickle before fully shipping stock.
Is sony that create stuff like that. If you have that low numbers of units, you can sell then online, or by pre-order, so you can make a reservation for your unit. That way no one can get your unit, theres can be lines, but not pushing.
-Woof woof woof!
The limit of Sony's fault in this matter is setting the price so far below what people are willing to pay that these scalpers could profit with little effort. If the price were higher, demand would come down until there isn't enough to be made by scalping, and the scalpers would go away.
Bind warranty service to first purchaser, and make sting purchases through enough of the larger setups, and nail the scalpers by publicly denying support to them (heck, even publish their contact details on the front of the site). If you cant even present proof of purchase, well, you're going to be sitting on a paperweight for a while. Any price increases from this would be small compared to the 2x-3x gouging.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
They could have auctioned a 'limited edition' until their production came up to full speed.
Those weren't businessmen, they were probably involved with the Yukuza who have numerous schemes based on exploiting homeless men, for instance in collecting recyclable cans, to turn a profit. Using the term busienssmen gives the wrong impression of what was going on.
While I agree that greed is not an "admirable" trait, I have to wonder who you and the GP think is being exploited? Certainly not the homeless person who got paid ~$170 for his troubles. The only one I think that could meet the qualifications are the people buying these consoles from the Japanese equivalent of ebay for outrageous sums of money; but if you can afford to spend thousands of dollars on ebayed consoles, then it's a bit of a stretch to say you're being exploited. The only ones being wronged here are the people who really wanted an PS3 for christmas but can't afford one now, but the only one to blame for that is Sony (and Microsoft) for their lame hype-inducing marketing tactics that are based on artificial scarcity. It's been pretty much common knowledge that the real PS3 launch will happen in Q1/2007.
I think there's a very distorted and dangerous picture of what society should do for needy people (homeless etc.). Of course, a social net is important, but just giving handouts is couterproductive, as it destroys the feeling of self-worth, and delays the re-introduction of these people into society. If you, however, employ them and make their income actually dependant on their work, they will start to grow again, and shed the victim mentality.
In this sense, I see nothing wrong with these people being paid to do a service. And the fact that the article submitter is, apparently, outraged, is just the reflection of this distorted view of what society can and should do to improbe the well-being of poor people.
You offer someone money for a job. They don't have to take the job, or the money.
If they do, you're both gaining value. You're getting what you want done, they're getting the money.
Wheres' the problem here?
These people would be on the streets anyway, at least it stopped them from panhandling and annoying other people for a couple of days.
No sig today...
http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/top/foreigners-and-fi ghts-ps3-jpn-launchs-dark-side-214130.php
this link makes a bukkake on my cpu !
Don't go! What will happen to /. if all the smart people leave? Who will respond and moderate? Do we really need another Digg? Hello? Helloooo-oooo?
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
20,000 yen = 170 dollars
"I'm not saying that this is all Sony's fault, or that they are juridically responsible. But I think it is a problem when companies plan for and profit from violence at product releases"
was Re:Yes, Sony is to blame
davecb5620@gmail.com
Very insightful, thank you very much!
But, Sony CAN ALWAYS restrict the supply to create a higher price, at least up to a limit -- the price gets too high and people will just buy an xbox. The more differentiated the product, the easier it is for the producer to do this, and they do it ALL THE TIME.
Sony LOVES this sort of thing. It creates a marketing buzz that Sony never could using traditional advertising. Why do you think they scheduled the Japanese launch a week before the US launch? There are shortages expected in both countries.
I know that Sony has been issuing press releases, blaming the short supply on the unavailability of parts. That's a crock -- it implies that Sony is incapable of managing its supply chain. In reality, EVERY new launch of a game machine deliberately keeps the original supply low for the purpose of generating this buzz. Then, shortly before Christmas, a bunch more are flooded on the market and consumers, surprised that they are even able to find one at all, gobble them up.
They decided to go to launch with an insanely popular device - this popularity mostly of their own devising, see endless hype over the last months/years - with a woefully small number of units.
:)
So that they can get the "PS3s sell out in 2 hours" headlines.
So they get press coverage like this about people auctioning them.
So the PS3 pricetag doesn't look so bad compared to the $1000 or more it sells for on Ebay. Hell, it's "only" $500, must be a good deal, right?
I fully accept they may have had shortages of components or other manufacturing issues. However, the launch date and the amount of stock they had available was *entirely* under their control (As Europe has found out - they've pushed that back far enough). They could have pushed the launch back a month and had half a million units available to launch. But, they would have missed out on the media frenzy.
The deceitful activities going on by the businessmen mentioned in the article is a logical response to this sort of launch. By no means am I condoning this behaviour, but it's naive to think that Sony didn't reckon this would happen - they *wanted* it to happen. They don't care if Joe Gamer gets his machine, they care about it becoming an object of frenzied desire and generating newspaper column inches.
Come on guys (and gals?)! This is not an essential element for life we're talking about! This is not some scam to get extra food rations before they are over, or medicine, etc. This is just a gaming machine. Same old thing that happens at almost every concert that is popular (poor people get in line early as "agents" for someone else). So they were homeless and/or chinese, so what? Where is the "racism" implied in the tags of the article? This clearly shows nothing has happened over the weekend...
Does this officially make the PS3 an addiction? After all, if you will suck dick for it...
... and then they built the supercollider.
The people who wait for hours in long lines at 'product release' of some new thing are supposed to be dedicated, devoted fanatics to that particular retail product.
I can't help but shudder at the thought of the pure spirit of materialistic fanaticsm being diluted by these stand-in buyers who probably aren't even completely dressed up as their favorite character from a game.
This sort of thing will dilute the thrill of being one of the first enthusiasts to purchase popular products. I can't help but think that maybe we should petition Bob Barker of 'The Price Is Right' to start up a public campaign to stand up for the rights of fanatical consumers everywhere.
Slightly off topic, but I'm wondering what else was part of the deal between the homeless man and the manager. To buy the PS3, the homeless man must've been given money that amounts to much more than 20,000 yen. So what's to stop the homeless man to just take that money and run? It's not like homeless man has any collateral. Perhaps his family? Then what's stopping a single homeless man who has nothing tying him down to just run for it?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
. ..
I don't know what you call Communism, but socialism is working pretty well in the Scandanavian countries, as U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders just told Amy Goodman. http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/0 8/1457245
e t_Union (How many immigrant computer programmers and engineers do you know in your own country who were trained in the USSR?) Don't forget, they put the first man in space.
You want games? I heard Linus Torvalds interviewed by Terry Gross: "I was very lucky. When I was in the university, I didn't have to pay tuition, and I had a stipend for my living expenses. I could spend all day writing computer games." (Quoting from memory.) He wanted a faster OS, and that's how he started to develop Linux.
Let's take real Communism. I once met Loren Graham, the MIT professor who was America's top expert on Soviet science, and the only one who understood the Soviets in their own terms. He gave a lecture in which he detailed all the failings of Soviet science.
I asked him what the Soviets did *well*. He told me, "their education system." Under Communism, literacy is 100% (everywhere in the world). But beyond that their technical education was among the best in the world. They educated not just an elite, but millions of scientists and engineers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_in_the_Sovi
Of course the Soviet Union was a frequently-brutal dictatorship -- until Gorbachev. They didn't have the freedom that white people had in the United States.
Today, Russia is a good model of what America would be like if the Republican free-market conservatives took over: a government that can't collect taxes, run by oligarchs and dictators, where you can't get education or even health care if you can't pay for it.
And if you destroy the government, so your rich friends don't have to pay taxes (as Republican ideologues like Grover Norquist want to do), you have no money for basic research. According to Science magazine, the well-funded Soviet scientific research enterprise is gone. Their scientists are driving cabs and opening restaurants, not creating computer games.
Save your outrage for something that matters. Replace PS3 and sony in this story with beenie-baby or cabbage patch kid and re-evaluate your outrage.
Maybe the real story is that the PS/3 is made of cylon parts? Why else would Starbuck have spent all this time posing as a foreign student in Japan???
Don't buy it!!!
This would only be wrong for Sony if A) They forbidded the re-sale of the PS3 through some sort of EULA (and then Sony would be the nasty person for telling people what they could and could not do with something they own) or B) Demanded a CUT of the profit that was made from the re-sale of the PS3, again see above. Other than that, some guy bought a PS3 yay for sony! handed it to some reseller who was willing to pay him to wait in line for him, yay for queue guy! Reseller guy who then sells it to someone else who is willing to buy it for an outrageous price because its a limited commodity, yay for reseller! Guy who has a PS3 for himself or a family member, gets to brag about the fact they have the hottest new thing and most everyone else doesn't. Yay for them! So there was pushing an shoving in line, maybe a fight or two broke out, wow... like thats not any line that waits for a long time for anything... Ive seen worse in short lines for the bus.
As pointed by KDR_11k : "Panem et circenses !" is nothing new in governments that need to keep their population under control.
In the past, the former Soviet bloc saw a lot of different clones of popular occidental home computers. The Pravetz serie of Apple II clones made in Bulgaria is a nice exemple.
Rampant piracy and enough compatibility to original hardware has provided a lot of software for them. Modification introducing better cyrillic support made them popular in buisness too.
More recently, China saw a lot of handheld clones (among which Gamate could be an exemple) and unlicensed "system-on-chip built in a joystick" type of emulators (So much popular that Nintendo decided to try to earn some money and market their licensed version, the Nintendo iQue).
So if the Soviet bloc was still up and still had enough factories, or in the current situation : in a few years (enough so the chinese can reverse engineer and adapt the technology ; having the actual factories producing the real stuff on its territory may help), it's are very likely that clones will how up and proliferates, maybe with some modification to adapt to the host country (better support for chinese dialects, better support for chinese "firewall") with the notable feature to remain enough compatible with the original device so pirated/unlicensed copies of game will run on said device.
And to protect from corrupt occident, Yahoo-based anti-Democracy content filters may be featured too.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
It makes the world a better place to live.
Deleted
how much does MS pay you to write this shit zonk,
ZONK is a MORON idiot basher
A real customer is someone who buys your product. Your best customers are the ones who buy the most of your product at the highest price. It's a business problem and given Sony's profit problems they should almost certainly have been auctioning PS3s in lots of 10 on eBay.
Deleted
Considering that the new member numbers are over 1 million, it seems that your low 6 digit UID may have some value.... It wouldn't be the first time someone bought a lower uid for /. "prestige"...
Imagine how much better off these homeless guys would be if, instead of spending $2000 on a PS3, you waited until March--that's three and a half months--and gave $1000 to charity. You'd have saved $400 over rough eBay price. And you'd be a whopping three months behind on the latest games.
You've completely forgotten about time preference. e.g. "I want it, and I want it NOW!"
ACTION IN THE PASSING OF TIME: Time Preference as an Essential Requisite of Action
This, like all economics is a simple matter of supply and demand (across the dimension of time). Right now PS3 supplies are scarce, demand is high, so prices are high.
Remember the Dreamcast? In 1998 it fetched nearly $500 through parallel trading from Japan to the USA. By 2001, you could get one at any big box store for $50 -- only 3 years later. So, asking people to simply wait 1/3 of a year because of a vague social cause is ridiculous.
Homeless people gained temporary employment. The people who want a PS3 the most got one. Entrepreneurs who figured out how to make the two previous statements occur earn a tidy profit. WHERE IS THE HARM???
*shakes head* Well I've been here longer than you son, and it still amazes me how such self-serving ignorant dribble could be modded "Insightful". Since you couldn't be bothered reading the article before launching into your hysterical defence, here's a portion of the email from the eyewitness:
...
This is the true story of the PlayStation 3 debut in Japan. This is the kind of expose that Japanese media are prevented to run because of their nationalism and close ties with big business. While it's honorable to not smear their own countrymen (Sony) for their botched launch, the truth must be told.
Sony should be scolded for staging a national launch event with 80,000 units. An extreme lack of supply ignited an extreme surge of demand - that of which poor Chinese and opportunistic Japanese took full advantage of today.
If Sony and major retailers like Bic Camera or Yodobashi Camera are going to participate in launch day festivities like today, police need to be present.
If measures aren't taken to try and curb rampant scalping of hardware through online auctions, then retailers must address their customers - Mandarin-speaking Chinese. Don't bother having your employees shout into megaphones all morning long - nobody understands a word they are saying.
If you want to throw rocks, throw them at the originator instead of the editor.
Don't let the door hit your arse on the way out.
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
I don't understand why paying homeless people to stand in line to get a PS3 is a bad thing. It seems like making a big deal out of "Family pays maid to clean house!". I honestly bet the homeless people thought it was a pretty sweet deal. If I pay a homless guy $20 to help clean up my yard? I guess I'm curious why this is an article.
news at 11
I was under the impression that here in California most all new console sales are handled via preorders. Retailers know in advance how many units they'll be getting for launch, so they just sell the rights to each purchase in advance. So no lines are necessary, except perhaps right before the first preorders are made available.
Do they not do preorders in Japan? Why not?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I do not agree with the point of view of this article. It's not "evil" to pay 20,000 yen to a homeless person to stand in line to purchase a PS3 for you. And it is not "evil" to later sell that PS3 for a higher price to someone who's willing to pay more for it. It's the way things work. You pay someone to do the hard work for you, you get the fruits of that person's work, and multiply its profits. There's always a risk in being the investor. For all you know, the homeless person can sell the PS3 himself and run away to live in a different street. Neither is Sony to be blamed for making products and selling them. Sony has just created a whole new market through which people will hire a Chinese guy to stand in line, buy PS3s, and sell them again at a higher price. Because the market dictates that the lack of supply and huge demand justifies it being resold at a higher price. Money will change hands, products will change hands, and somehow the economy will benefit. If Sony made no PS3s, then that market would've never emerged.
.. I'm a reformed WoW player.... :-)
See... I'm on the patch
So these would be reallife gold farmers that waited in line?
And lastly, friends dont let friends by gold^H^H^H^HPS3's on ebay.
Licensing the design would mean more companies searching for ways to make more parts. Undoubtedly, at least one of them would either know another supplier who could produce the scarce part, or be a company capible of producing said part. I imagine at least Philips could make the lasers. They bought out the chip manufacturer Signetics, so at the minimum they have access to creating their own chips, why not lasers and whatever else they need too? At any rate, more parts are going to be produced because there will be far more people trying to get them produced, rather than just a handful of people at Sony. IMHO anyway...
Nothing at all, I completely agree with you. In fact, I have another post somewhere on this thread defending the inherently just "supply and demand" behavior taking place.
My poster was in response to the parent (who has since been modded "troll") who seemed to think that it was Sony's fault that people in the crowd got unruly. I took exception to the misplacement of responsibility on Sony's shoulders for people who acted uncivilized - refering to the people causing fights, not the resellers. I'm a firm believer that capitalism is the only truly self-correcting system as things are always worth whatever people will pay for them.
From a chinese national:
Some of our poor people oversea hired to buy you rich kids' fancy new Toy for saving himself from staving in a foreign land. That's a basic human right he, as a human being, owns. There is nothing concering communism or chinese at all.
He might be a little not-buy-the-rule in making his money. but remember, the poor status of chinese people was owned partially duo to the guns, opium barrels, and economic blockage of the western powers from 1840s on. The current order wasn't made concerning our people interests. while you guys worry about to get hands on a new gaming toy, we people are fighting for survive. if you dont respect this right of human to struggle for survive, then you dont respect the spirit of democracy at all, and you are just fake , mean, rich kids born in a country owned its prestiage by mistreating another nation years ago.
China, in fact, is very fragile.
I will never understand Slashdot's amazing ability to take a relatively simple situation and someone manage to direct rage at both a corporate body (Sony) and common and easily understood phenomenon (scalping).
Basic economics will tell you that this informal method of distribution is the result Sony pricing its consoles severely below the market value, thus generating a shortage. It obviously does this to drum up media attention by completely selling out its product, and you can find similar situations wherever a firm is selling a limited resource below its true market value. Though you may not like it, this is a completely valid and legal strategy from Sony, and used by many other companies. Because of the inefficiencies created by this artificial shortage, people will be forced to pay much higher implicit costs for the console, time spent standing in line. The time of the homeless and very poor is worth relatively little, so it makes sense that they will be payed by others whose time is worth much more to stand in line. These middlemen will then be able to sell the product at its market value. Ultimately this is an efficient system, because the middlemen are able to sell the consoles to those who value them the most (those who will pay the most). The people standing in line benefit, they get paid, the scalpers benefit, they turn a profit, the end users benefit, they get their console without standing in line, and Sony benefits, it gets the media attention it wants. I'm sorry that some people got shoved while standing in line?
In the long run, I think that you may see some console manufacturers attempting to capture the difference between corporate pricing strategy and actual market value, rather than using their low price to drive media coverage. Imagine Sony auctioning off consoles at the distributor level or even the consumer level, so that people don't waste time waiting in line, and those willing to pay the most can get the consoles directly from Sony. Another way of capturing the huge consumer demand is for Sony to attempt to match the market value of the Sony with its console prices. This situation of long lines and scalping would not exist if Sony started with prices around $1,500 (search ebay for PS3s if you think that is excessive), and lowered this price $50 every week until its in the $600-$700 range. Of course they wouldn't get the same sensational sell-out stories, but ultimately I think that console quality usually wins out over hype.
What's with the "food or other necessity" exception to free market ideology? If my neighbor is a farmer or doctor, and I make PS3s, I infer you would advocate that HE has to buy MY product on the free market, yet somehow I'm entitled to HIS labor at less-than-market prices. Do I understand you correctly?
I think you mean Freeway - 60 seconds per player, no matter how good you are?
The bum didn't make a single part or right a single line of code. Fuck him.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Nail him to a tree!
At the end of the day you just don't like how other people spend their money.
When you look at history your kind (smug moralists) have caused far more trouble then their kind (materialistic dweebs).
Repent, give all your money away before it's too late.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Yeah, this is a little strange, but maybe people can show a little restraint and just wait for the stores to get more PS3s? I play games a lot but if I'm gonna save a few hundred bucks by waiting for the stores to get the system as opposed to buying it off eBay, I'm gonna wait.
Sadly, this just caters to an impatient society...
Was there an A-Team or Battlestar Galactica convention in town?
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Sony, in all its might and glorious power, should have had people knecapping people who they felt were waiting in line for others. I would have loved to see the article if Sony delayed the launch because "People are asking other people to stand in line for them". Uhhg, what fucking bullshit
The real news here is of course that Zonk admits that he's wrong and beeing needlessly biased. HOLY SHIT.
that is roughley three times the performance of the core 2 duo! Does anyone know if i'll be able to use my existing lcd vga monitor?6 81.html
After Christmas, i suspect more ps3's to flow in at or below current pricing, which will make intel system's even cheaper. I think yellowdog linux has plenty of desktops to choose from besides E17, i like fvwm-crystal or Xfce for performance reasons as well as functionality and appearance.
http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/05/16/news_6124
I myself do a lot of charity work (blind people), but I believe that charity should help the needy to stand on his/her own feet, rather than feed their victim mentality. In that sense, giving a job to a jobless person, is much more useful TO THAT PERSON, than just handing out food, money etc. because when they work and earn money, their self-respect increases and they actually have a chance of regaining their position in society, and most importantly, in their own eyes.
c id=16812996
Please read my other comment: http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=206172&
If you go take a look at auctions.yahoo.co.jp right now and search for PS3, you'll find lots of auctions being bid up to astronomical amounts. Millions, hundreds of millions, even billions of yen. There are some threads on 2channel (this monster BBS where loonies get together and plot mayhem) filled with people urging each other to set up new yahoo.co.jp accounts in order to go ruin the bidding on the PS3 units.
The seller has the ability to delete or ignore these obviously false bids, apparently, but it's an interesting reaction from people who aren't too happy with the whole "free market, charge what it will bear" approach shown by the flippers who buy these things in bulk through their homeless minions and turn right around around to make some yen off of the things.
First, MSFT's "surprise" launch of 360 forced Sony to accelerate their timetable for PS3. Before the official 360 announcement came in the summer of 2005, the console wasn't really expected by the marketplace until 2006, or later. In fact, MSFT chose a "global" launch format for 360 which was roundly criticized for shortages. However, this seeded several markets with the 360. Fast forward, now Sony has to get PS3 to market in a bit of a rush to avoid ceding two Christmas seasons to 360 (and one to Wii). Sony's sort of forced into a semi-global launch. Remember how PS2 launched in Japan 6 months before the US? Now the US is receiving 80% of launch units. Huh? Frankly, MSFT has strategically forced Sony to rush PS3 ahead of their planned roadmap. So, you see, all of this hate is misdirected at Sony. It is, in fact, MSFT's fault that Sony has rushed PS3 to market. If you're going to hate, at least direct it where it's deserved--Redmond. Doh!
Maybe the business changed in the last few years, but this is exactly how many import shops (i.e. Liksang, Play Asia, and etc.) get their hardware stock. They line up and pay retail on launch day and then smuggle it (to avoid import duties) into other countries. Software on the other hand is much easier to procure, as productions are out-sourced (why go all the way to Japan when the factory is next door), and Japanese retailers often does favors for them for getting rid of their overstocks.
As much as I agree with your analysis, and I do agree, I think the core issue is something else.
Consider the event and the intended audience. It is a release of the newest gaming console in Japan. The idea is to have a big media event, both for publicity and general fun (believe it or not). But not just any event, and event with a specific audience, namely Japanese Gamers (being a game console released in Japan). The whole idea of this event was to do something that involved the Japanese gamers most interested in this product, or at least mostly involved these gamers (because you can't expect a 100% single demographic there). Instead, the majority of the people were neither Japanese nor gamers.
This is a problem on many levels: for Sony as a media event, for gamers as an exciting event, for gamers who genuinely want a PS3 to play, and for what this says about the system. Sony wants a media event for Japanese (gamers in particular) but can't really do this because most of the people don't even speak Japanese. Gamers want (well, may or may not, this is maybe just a little bit me) an exciting PS3 event to go because it might be fun and also want to obtain the new toy for their own personal enjoyment, but can't because the place is filled with people not there for those reasons.
And then the system. Now, I am laissez-faire in my approach to capitalism, but I think this strikes everyone as at least odd, if not wrong, when we have more profiteers than actual regular consumers, for whom this entire event was meant. Or when the profiteers squeeze out the normal consumers (which may or may not be the case, but is certainly possible), which is certainly disgusting.
In short, we have the unfortunate fact that something that should have been a fun and exciting event for those who are interested was instead altered into a profiteering event. This isn't anyone's fault, but it is very unfortunate, interesting to consider and possibly means that in the future any business with a major release may have to reconsider how to handle it to ensure both their and their clients' statisfaction.
... What kind of idiot would hire a *lawyer* to stand in line for them?
Stupidest. Comment. Ever.
Would you care for a side of REALITY with your conspiracy theory?
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
He's hardly a nut, I think you missed his point.
Firstly, he's hardly smug. Secondly, he's pointing out not why he in particular felt this was wrong but instead attempted to explain why, despite no laws or capitalistic principles were violated, so many people find this story distasteful. He's not the lone voice in the desert here, he's just the one person who figured out why there were many voices meandering around attempting to find someone to blame.
He isn't calling for you to spend your dollars differently. He didn't call for you to repent. What he did do was ask a few very good questions about the nature of society.
What does it say about our society that we are willing to spend $2000 to purchase something we can get just months later at a third of that price? In those three months value will actually be ADDED to the item in the form of new games, yet people pay more to have it sooner?
Charity in this case would be his personal preference on where to spend the $1000 or more surplus from simply waiting, but you can make the same argument with whatever else you might desire to spend money on. Spending $2000 now means you're $1400 dollars less for the year that you could have spent on peripherals, games, dates, cars, plane tickets, world domination, taxes, presents, bills, books, ebayed WoW accounts, HDTVs or the world's largest collection of toilet seats.
Smugness or morality aren't necessarily even involved. While some people, such as myself and perhaps the OP, find it distasteful primarily for moral reasons others might find it distasteful because it's a poor investment on the parts of those who spend $2000 on a PS3. It's the same distaste many felt for scams such as Gizmondo. Some people were morally offended, some were economically offended.
Your reaction is as guilty of knee-jerk fallacies as Zonk blaming Sony was.
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!
Well, I'd like to ask two questions.
1) If these 'poor Chinese' didn't say anything or the author doesn't understand Chinese, why could he figure out that the crowds are filled with Chinese people? Why not koreans, Vietnams, Thais, Laos, Malaysias, or other asian-looking people?
2) Why the 'poor Chinese' were appointed by the Japanese bosses? Did he talk to the Japanese guys and make clear the facts? Couldn't it be the Chinese merchants appointed the homeless Japanese old man to do that? Why not merchants from other countries?
I'm a Chinese foreign student now live in Tokyo. I've been in Japan for one and half years and I know much about the situation here. Japanese society, IMHO, are somehow against foreigners especially Chinese.
The biggest reason I think is the mass media. I don't watch TV news just because for a lot of times it intentionaly amplifies the dark side of Chinese people living in Japan. it doesn't objectively reflects the real situation of China and the life of Chinese people (honestly, mostly are students) here. It let me feel that if those bad Chinese guys prefer Japan and somehow they managed going there. You know, the visa application process of Japan is one of the most difficult.
Everytime I heard about Japanese media talking about Chinese economics, I could smell hostility and jealousy towards us. China is developing fast not because we have open policy or we have big market, etc. It's because we, our people, have been f**ked by our own government for too long time and now it's our time to recover and come back and join the global society. It's not 70s or 80s anymore and few of us of my generation would prefer to live in a hostile country just for greener pasture.
Somebody might say that Chinese media also sucks. Yes, nobody in China think we have no problem in our media otherwise he's just pretending not knowing. But this won't be the reason for the mass media in a democratic country to against us.
As a result, it won't be strange for the author to think that all the crowds are full of poor Chinese people. Where in Japan, anything bad related to an asian-looking foreign guy would possibly be associated with either Chinese or North Koreans.
Secondly, in the article, he said that there're a lot of Chinese exchange students. But AFAIK, if you're an exchange students in Japan, you will be funded with scholarship, and the tuition fee waived. There's no reason for an exchange student to line up for almost 12 hours - all night - to get the pitty 20,000 Japanese yen. At least, all of my friends are not that thrilled to buy a PS3 on its first release day.
In the article, he mentioned that a Chinese student got very excited about his new purchase. Well, PLEASE don't mix up these with others. First, any PS fan, who can get a PS3 on the first day will get thrilled, no matter what his purpose is. Second, if he put his PS3 on auction, it's his freedom and I could say it happens all around the world and it's a nice investment in the business point of view. So, you can't put them into the same category.
" These are the lucky Chinese kids in Japan, getting an education, and trying to get ahead in life. " I didn't quite get the meaning actually, does he think we cannot get good education in China? Or we are dooomed to have a poor life in China? Well, frankly, at lease the purpose for me to study abroad is to widen my horizon so that I could have some advantage in the future. It's because China is still a semi-close country managed by the government in a lot of ways. I could tell you that Chinese people are very kind - sincerely kind, not superficially kind - and very open-minded. A lot of my friends warned me not to go to Japan for historical reasons, but I insisted because I think we're still very close in culture and they have some merits I could learn from. I think I learned what I want and I'm pretty happy to return China and start my working career after my graduation.
For long time I tried to find reasons to explain why we do this, wh
Try spending time in the REAL world. Where people have to WORK to SURVIVE. Asshole. I hope you end up homeless someday. I bet you never worked a day in your life.
zo'o nai
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