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The PlayStation 3 Launches In the U.S.
Sony's next-gen console has officially launched in the states, complete with an NYC launch party, and a giant line in San Francisco. While many gamers went home happy, the night was not without incident. There was also some ugliness, with individuals being hired to stand in line, as was done in Japan earlier this week. Overall, though, the news is positive for the hundreds of gamers who waited through the night for their new console. "As midnight approached, the first person in line, New York native Angel Paredes, was escorted into the SonyStyle Store where he was handed the first North American PS3 by Hirai and Stringer. The console's box also included a personal autographed message from Hirai. Paredes, his voice hoarse from interviews and arms tired from repeatedly hoisting the console, was a good sport, standing still for the multitude of photographers and offering a few words for anyone who asked. The first three gamers in line were comped their PS3s. Once the media buzz died down, the rest of the attendees were ushered in to get what they had been waiting for all week. Though the consoles' next destinations were unknown — many are expected to be posted on eBay for a quick profit — the next destinations of the new PS3 owners was clear — go home and get some rest. " Any readers spend the night in lines, and want to share about it? Did you eBay the thing, or are you just taking a break from Resistance? Let us know how things went, and what the system is like.
But with the prices I'm hearing on Ebay, I'm beginning to wish I had. A night on a long line isn't too bad if you're pulling in four to eight grand profit.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
Why is that ugly? Seems like capitalism at its finest. If someone is willing to pay for a service and someone is willing to perform that service, whats ugly about that?
Lazy maybe, but hardly ugly
I don't really follow games, what are the most anticipated titles besides the generic football games?
The PS3 is neat. The Wii is neat. These people are insane.
1) It's a video game console, not a cure for cancer. You don't need to get worked up over it.
2) This isn't the only chance you'll have to get one. If it is, you really don't want one anyway.
3) If you seriously didn't think you could be in the "I waited days in line for this and got nothing" group you need several reality checks.
Frankly, I'm scared that I'm going to walk to my car with my brand new Wii and some nut with a gun is going to try and take it from me. These morons seem desperate enough that they'll actually shoot me for it.
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!
"wouldn't you want to have a handoff for something like this?"
...and "lose it"."
This already exists. It's called an escrow service.
"what's to say people at ups or fedex aren't scanning boxes with a x-ray machine to identify a box with a ps3 in it
The same thing that says people in other professions also should not steal: they'll lose their job and may wind up in jail if caught. That might not stop some FedEx/UPS/USPS employees but I imagine the lion's share of them aren't going to risk their job (all 3 of which have nice benefits and excellent retirement packages though not a flashy payscale) over a $600 game system. And whoever is paying out that insurance is going to be pretty motivated to find the culprit(s).
I'm sure fraud will happen but far more people will conduct perfectly legal transactions than not.
What moral cost? It's called supply and demand. It's not like this is a necessary purchase for survival.
That was supposed to be funny! How many of us remember being kids and your "friends" at school would invite you over just so you could watch them play Nintendo?
In practically every interview I have seen the reporter is talking to someone who intends to sell the PS3 for massive profit; in one case a man was talking about how he was going to make $2000 in one days work.
I was discussing this last night with a former manager of a Gamestop. We came to the conclusion that only people that were buying PS3s now were going to sell it on Ebay.
But the amount of people willing to pay more than $1,000 is very small. So a handful of people will make money, but since Ebay is being flooded with PS3s there is a high chance that many of these Ebayers are going to be sorely disappointed.
Secondly... Most of those $9,000 bids are just fake bids of people who have no intention of actually buying it.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I'm actually reasonably disturbed by the Chaos that has been created by greed ...
How is reselling a PS3 greed? To label this greed you need to know what financial situation these people are in.
Are they standing in line to afford a luxury item or is this a rare opportunity to make 2 months rent in a day?
Ticket/Event/Product Scalping ( reselling ) is not always illegal and many legitimate business do it. Tickmaster at least at one point aunctioned tickets to popular events.
Finally, who is being hurt by the PS3 resellers? The gamers who have to wait an extra week to get their hands on a PS3?
I (personally) see nothing wrong with the act of scalping a product in order to make a decent profit; I do however see a problem with trampling people to get a product in order to sell it online for a decent profit. Regardless of whether your use of your windfall is a noble cause or not, when you callously disregard the wellbeing of your fellow person in order to make the money it becomes an immoral act.
"and shot one person who wouldn't hand over their money."
And all the people behind the shooting victim worked hard to contain their glee at being able to move up a spot, no doubt.
Seriously, the only people who own a PS3 right now are those who literally have more money than brains. I don't know if this is a sign of the susceptability of young people to marketing/groupthink or what, but there is no rational reason to put up with this nonsense for something that will likely continue to be manufactured and sold for years ("one night only," maybe, but not the launch of a flagship product). If nothing else, the high price of the console is is made all the more unaffordable due to the missed hours of work spent standing in line.
Here's a litmus test: is standing in line for a PS3 something you would be proud to tell your children about a decade from now?
"The employees were fine and enthusiastic, but the corporate policies were inane. For instance, no tents while they're open"
"Inane?" They're a retail store, not a campground! If anything, you should just be happy that you were allowed to loiter outside the store to begin with, as your presence no doubt had an intimidating effect on the store's more legitimate customers. The people in the lines I saw differed from the people I see on streetcorners holding their cardboard signs only by degree.
"Along with that, no official rules for the line from Target (read this as ass covering) "
No, read it as "Not their fucking job."
"After work today is going to be insane!"
And after Monday? After next week? Next month? Next year? Will the insanity you participated in still have been worth it once the novelty has worn off?
Here's a question: of all the people who stood in line for a PS3 in the US, how many voted ten days ago?
I got tired of spending the big bucks to maintain a killer PC. Soon I will build a fairly pissed off PC but I'm not spending my money on graphics hardware but on memory and storage because I want to be doing 3d modeling/rendering and video editing. It's nice to have a kick-ass 3D card for your 3d work, but frankly it is not a necessity and a $100 card today beats the living shit out of the sexiest stuff from back in the day - which has always been true but the point is that today even a pile of crap computer is pretty badass.
But the point is that if I buy a game console, it's cheap, it's replaceable, it's portable, it has good controllers, and there's a huge library of games that I know will work. No fucking with my video drivers. No updating DirectMedia so that I can have out-of-sync streaming video behind my characters in Final Fantasy VII. (Which I do have for both PS1 and PC.) And so on.
I mean, Mechwarrior III can't seem to properly draw its interface on the last system I had, running Windows XP... old games have "issues" working. Update DirectX to play a new game, and the old games don't work.
To hell with it. I'll play console games. It does mean I won't be playing first person shooters (I don't believe in playing them without KB+Mouse) but I can live without that. If nothing else it'll probably stop me from burning out my adrenal gland prematurely.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
where thinking about the longer-term consequences of your actions isn't just overlooked, it's actively ignored. If you mention "opportunity cost" to the average credit card user out there, you're going to get a look of ignorance that's almost bovine in its nescience.
:-)
Funny thing is, I used to be in pretty much that same frame of mind until I got married. I just never thought more than a couple of months ahead... probably mostly because I got in the habit of living paycheck-to-paycheck when I was in the Army (talk about low pay!) and while I was a college student, I was just living month-to-month on my GI Bill money. My wife (who is brilliant and a 4.0 math major) started pointing out all the things that we were doing that involved long-term tradeoffs and I was totally amazed at the amount of money we were spending on "unnecessaries." Working together, we were able to get ahead of the curve and eventually, we bought both our cars for cash and our house with a nice down payment. We haven't paid interest on a credit card in about five years, and the last time I was out of work, we had enough cash to tide us over. We still spend money on "fun" stuff, but we're always careful to think about the tradeoffs so that we're making informed decisions.
The moral of my story: if you're not a financial genius, marry someone who is
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It's simple supply and demand. Right now there's only 400k of them in the country, much much fewer than rabid Sony fanboys and hardcore gamers. That drives the price up (in an open market such as ebay, anyway).
Once Sony gets the production issues worked out, the supply/demand won't be in their favor anymore - supply will go up and demand will go down as the fanboys get their console. Once it gets to the point that anyone who wants a PS3 can get one at retail, then we'll find out if the $600 is above what the market will bear.
And we won't even know that for several years. Console price drops are just a form of market segmentation. Sony will sell every PS3 it can to the people who are willing to shell out $600 for it, then drop the price and sell it to everyone willing to pay at that level, then do it again, and again, and again, etc.
There's other factors involved besides price, like the size and quality of the game library at a given point in time, and the age of the console... but what you might find is that there's a big spike in sales when the console finally hits that "sweet spot", which my guess is around $300, the same price range that most every successful console launches at.