People Swapping PS3s for Wiis?

An anonymous reader writes "To add to Sony's problems with the PS3 launch, it now appears that some Playstation 3 owners are trying to trade their PS3s for Wiis. The author writes: 'There's also speculation that people want the Wii because the PS3s best game is Resistance: Fall of Man. This, of course, forget that there are plenty of cool PS3 games on the way, and the PS3 has its own motion sensing technology, which, while not as good as the Wii, is still pretty cool and opens up Sony to emulate some of the Wii's successes.'"

Comments

I'd trade in too

[schnits0r]

I'd trade in too if my Wii looked like this.

Re:I'd trade in too

[beckerist]

So how would you have sex with something like that???


Roll her in flour and look for the wet spot!

To be fair

[Shados]

To be fair, it does happen the other way around plenty, and with 360s, too. I've seen a lot of people return their Wiis when they learnt that online play wouldn't be Nintendo's main focus.

Not enough people, unfortunately, since I got Zelda for christmas, and I have no Wii to play it on >. I had several chances at a PS3, but not at a Wii, grrrrrrr...

Re:To be fair

[KDR_11k]

Probably because of the online comment. Of course people are stupid so this is still likely to happen but Nintendo did say they won't have online play ready until sometime in 2007. The original XBox didn't have online play from day one, either.

Re:To be fair

[necro2607]

Not only did I get Zelda Twilight Princess, I also got Red Steel and an extra Wii remote and nunchuck... STILL don't have the Wii, though... Wheee!!!

Re:To be fair

[The-Bus]

Trust me, Red Steel is much more fun when it's never put in the Wii.

I think my GFs parents were going to give us a PS3

[Anonymous Coward]

but that didn't happen...

An interesting story for my fellow dotters on a Christmas night...potentially offtopic, but probably not...

So I'm over my girlfriend's parents' house this evening for Christmas dinner. First Christmas for the both of us together, though I've been to the parents' house several times before, a nice yet cozy 3/1.5 built in the 1950s. We were getting ready to sit down for dinner, with the presents to be exchanged after dessert.

So we're in the living room making the normal chit-chat about work and family and presents, yada yada yada. And then it hits me. That "you know what it means when it happens" cramp in your colon. And then a bubble or two. I'm percolating. A cold sweat comes over me. And then your intestines tell your brain in no uncertain terms: things will be exiting soon, at a very rapid pace.

So I excuse myself from the conversation, sweat already forming on my brow, and I make my way to the back bedroom to purge this unrelenting force from my bowels. But oh my God...my GF's father is in the back bathroom. The only other bathroom is a small bath located directly off of the living room itself. Oh no, that would never do. But alas, the percolation continues and my colon is screaming for purging. This will wait no longer.

So I return to the living room, no time for chit chat, though everyone there can sense that something is not quite right by the sweat pouring down my forehead and the singular purpose on my face. I plow my way into the guest bathroom and barely have time to sit on the toilet before the full force of a major colon blow bellows forth from my rectum. The sound virtually echoes in the small half bath and then the purging continues unabated, half diarrhea half flatulence over and over, shit splashing up on my backside. This process continues for a good 5 minutes before the wave is over. And now I sit there, brown liquid dripping off my anus, dripping off the sides and lid of the toilet.

And I ponder how I will exit the bathroom.

Do I pretend nothing happened. Do I play the sympathy angle? Play the "I'm sick sweetheart" angle? I decide to just play it off and pretend nothing happened. Perhaps they hadn't heard anything. Maybe it was all in my mind how noisy and guttural the sounds were.

So I flush, do my best to tidy up the bowl with the tiny little toilet brush they had next to the toilet. Wash, and exit.

And I exit to the horrified wide-eyed look of everyone in the living room. Yes, Virginia, it was really that loud apparently. GF's mom asks me if I'm ok. I play it off like, why yes, I'm fine, why? And then it hits. Like a brown fog descending on the valley, the odor from the bathroom washes over us like a wave from hell. I had turned the entire living room into a dutch oven. Oh my god.

So I did the only thing I could come up with quickly and motioned to the GF that we had to leave. And we made our quick apologies and made our way to the exit, while her mom noticeably gagged on the stench that had blown out of my asshole. And on our way out -- which the GF's mom by the way didn't object to at all (she was likely in a state of shock over what she had witnessed) -- the GF's dad comes out from the back bedroom and the stench hits him like a baseball bat to the face. The expression on his face was priceless, you'd think he had just walked into a room filled with mustard gas.

At that point, we quickly departed leaving behind a half dozen victims of my gastric evacuation. Merry fucking Christmas, LOL.

At first the GF was mad, but after we started laughing about it (and about a few of the "victims" whom we both can't stand) all was forgiven. I can't imagine eating Christmas dinner in that house, with it wreaking of shit and bowel blowback.

Other way around

[Tourney3p0]

I'll gladly trade my lightly used Wii for a new or lightly used PS3. Any takers?

Why I've adopted my girlfriend's philosophy

[MikeRT]

on video games. She and her family won't buy a new console for at least the first six months that it's out because they want to see what actually comes out for it, what others think, how many bugs it has, etc. I'm not surprised in the least now because the PS3 is very expensive, said to be rushed in a number of areas, and well, wasn't quite worth the hype.

As a former Dreamcast fan, I'm not surprised. Sony's hype engine is a double-edged sword. On the one hand it can really crush a poorly marketed, but good console. On the other, it set a bar that was ridiculous for their engineers to try to achieve.

People are starting to wise up to Sony and realize that they are great at hyping stuff that ends up being no better than their competition's products that happen to be significantly cheaper. They probably haven't even figured out why it is that Apple has kicked them squarely in the nuts in the digital music player market. I think their worst nightmare would be a dynamic duo of Apple and Nintendo building the One True Living Room Suite.

There are so many good games for XBox/XBox 360 and Playstation 2 that only hardcore gamers need to really go out and buy a PS3. I'm going back now and buying all of the games I missed when I was busy graduating from college last year and... there's no reason for a guy like me to buy a PS3 for at least a year and a half.

Re:Why I've adopted my girlfriend's philosophy

[powerlord]

there's no reason for a guy like me to buy a PS3 for at least a year and a half.

At which point they should have the supply problems nixed, and there should be quite a number of games that you might be looking forward to playing on it.

Kinda reminds me of when the PS2 launched.

Re:Why I've adopted my girlfriend's philosophy

[HappySqurriel]

To be honest, the reason I believe that Nintendo has been so successful (so far) with the Wii is that they recognized a need in the market and they built a system to fill that need. Essentially, Nintendo thought that there was a need for an inexpensive, easy to develop for, arcade-like system that could provide a new game play experience; and that is what they delivered.

Not to be too negative about the PS3, but the PS3 is designed to be "Exactly like every other system in history ... only better" whereas the Wii is designed to be "Something different". In my opinion the Wii is successful because of how unique it is.

Re:Why I've adopted my girlfriend's philosophy

[wizrd_nml]

I've been watching the console discussion taking place for the last couple of weeks and it's pretty clear that PS3 bashing has become the norm. Personally, I don't think I will ever buy a PS3, simply because I care more about fun games rather than good graphics.

But I don't think we should be too quick to judge the PS3 as "no better than their competition". The way it's configured, the PS3 has the potential to be better than the competition. I think it's just a matter of time before game developers get used to developing for it. A few quick thoughts:

- The sixaxis was overshadowed by the Wii's revolutionary controller, but it's still a very cool feature and makes the XBox 360's controller look disabled by comparison

- The potential of the cell processor architecture is significant. Once developers figure out how to make optimal use of it it could potentially take games to a new level (think realistic physics, better AI, a better online experience, etc..). Here, potential is the key word as it really depends on how well Sony helps game developers make use of its hardware.

- Blu-ray is a gamble, for sure. I think Sony pushed the format too soon. But if the gamble pays off and it does become the new standard, suddenly everyone's gonna wish they got a PS3 and those who don't have one will get one. In any case, Blu-ray allows game developers to put more content on the PS3 version of their games. This initially might just be bonus features (such as the-making-of videos) but eventually will translate into more gameplay content (extra levels perhaps?)

My 2 cents'.

Re:Why I've adopted my girlfriend's philosophy

[Medgur]

There is no such thing as a former Dreamcast fan. There are only Dreamcast fans who lament its early commercial demise.

Re:Why I've adopted my girlfriend's philosophy

[2ms]

It was so funny I remember people talking about how the PS2 was going to be a supercomputer not allowed into certain countries because it was so powerful it could give them nukes and how its emotion engine was going to make gaming almost indistinguishable from the real world. It was the biggest sham in the world. There were several games that actually looked better on Dreamcast than they did on the PS2.

This is actually the strategy that MS has used whenever Macs start getting a lot of attention. MS always says they have an OS with everything that Mac has Plus a whole bunch of new things that are going to revolutionize everything. And then the OS comes out five years late with, not only nothing revolutionary, but not even having the things Mac had 5 years earlier (two most salient examples: Win95 was supposed to be all new OS but at last second was switched to DOS at heart, Vista was supposed to have all these new techs yet now, years late, it's just terribly resource intensive XP with copy of Mac Aqua GUI).

I think this is Sony's strategy. They come up with these catchy names to go along with console like Emotion Engine or Cell (which really just another IBM chip only with more spikes and valleys in its capabilities -- not net positive) and trumpet them like nothing has ever been trumpeted before in front of would-be other console buyers for two years ahead of actual release just so that people will figure they better wait until the PS comes out because it is going to be teh omg SO revolutionary. Which it never is. Rant over. It just funny. It's sort of a total business model.

Re:Why I've adopted my girlfriend's philosophy

[cgenman]

To expand on this, I've tried putting a PS2 dual-shock into the hands of new players, like my girlfriend and my mother. "What's this?" they inevitably ask. It's an intimidatingly big mass of buttons, switches, diodes, etc. Add a "Wii-like" tilt sensor, and you just make something even LESS accessible.

Compare that to the Wii. It's a remote control that points. Everyone can play wii bowling. Everyone can navigate the metagame without wondering if they should use the d-pad or the left or right analog sticks. It's intuitive. You don't have to think as much about it. You can just get on with the business of playing games.

In addition to inexpensive, easy to develop for, unique, and short-time period experiences, the Wii also provides the instant accessibility that is sorely lacking in today's systems. Learning to play Rockstar's Table Tennis on the 360 takes about 1/2 hour. Learning to play Tennis on the Wii takes about 10 seconds. That's a huge difference if you're just trying to relax for a moment between sending the kids off to school and leaving for work yourself.

Re:Why I've adopted my girlfriend's philosophy

[smash]

Concomitant with that we should also think "longer development cycles and more expensive games." I think these will go hand in hand with developers trying to push the envelope on the Cell.

Maybe, maybe not.

If sony release (or a dev creates, in their first/second gen titles) a bunch of libraries and/or an optimising compiler to simplify development for it, perhaps it will be "easier" to develop for because there could be less need to optimise the game to "fit" within the hardware's abilities.

The PC platform is an awkward piece of shit (segmented memory, no standard video/audio hardware platform, etc) to program for compared to many of the platforms it displaced (eg, Amiga, Macintosh, ST, etc), but it had the raw power to make it "worth it".

Also, the dreamcast was supposedly easier to develop for than the PS2, due to it's (optional, perhaps? I know sega rally 2 uses it) use of WinCE, and look what happened there.

Sure, the saturn died, and it was awkward to program, but it also had other problems, like buggy hardware features (transparency from memory, for example) that contributed as well.

Yes, the PS3 will require developers to learn new tricks, but once they've got a couple of games/engines under their belt, and most of the "tough problems" are "solved" in their code library, they'll have a far more powerful machine to play with...

Re:Why I've adopted my girlfriend's philosophy

[trawg]

Compare that to the Wii. It's a remote control that points. Everyone can play wii bowling. Everyone can navigate the metagame without wondering if they should use the d-pad or the left or right analog sticks. It's intuitive. You don't have to think as much about it. You can just get on with the business of playing games.

I can't agree more. I just came back from Christmas day with the family where after seeing me, my brother and my sister playing Wii, everyone from my 4 year old cousin to my 80 year old grandfather wanted a go. They were able to pick it up and Just Play It.

I can't wait to see what happens in the next year or so with games once developers build on the stuff that it can offer.

Re:Why I've adopted my girlfriend's philosophy

[Stormwatch]

Also, the dreamcast was supposedly easier to develop for than the PS2, due to it's (optional, perhaps? I know sega rally 2 uses it) use of WinCE, and look what happened there.

WinCE was optional. It was not even built-in. Very few games used it, mostly simple-looking ones and PC ports (Armada, Sega Swirl, Railroad Tycoon), because it didn't perform as well as using Sega's own stuff. Sega Rally 2 was a bit of a miracle, and even then it had some framerate issues. But even without that, the Dreamcast was regarded as much easier to code for than the PS2.

Re:Why I've adopted my girlfriend's philosophy

[blighter]

What's wrong with being a dinosaur? Dinosaurs evolved into the point they're at for a reason.

Should the earth spontaneously start over with small, rat-like warm-blooded mammals?

Sure the mammals are smaller, more agile, and better able to survive clamatous events, but that's the only thing unique about them. The dinosaurs enormous size and incredible power have evolved over the years to meet the needs of the widest area of terrain types and I think their current form is, while maybe not perfect, a lot better for most uses than a little rat body.

Sure these mammals are good at the little niches they've managed to find but I think it's going to be dinosaurs for a long time to come...

Re:Why I've adopted my girlfriend's philosophy

[seebs]

Let me put this ease of use thing in perspective.

My in-laws were over a while back, with their kid (3 years, 11 1/2 months). He played Wii bowling. It took him two or three tries usually to roll the ball, because he has a hard time timing the release, but he could play the game.

When they came over for Christmas, he asked if he could play bowling again. We set it up. At age 4, and a couple of weeks, he can play the game moderately successfully. So can my mother-in-law, who is in no way a gamer.

Now, can he play as well as an adult who has better control? No. But he can play the game.

FWIW, I got mine on release day, and just had to replace the first pair of batteries last night. Not bad at all!

Only a few people in my extended family can get used to playstation controllers. Hell, I've been playing console games for something like 23 years now (since my Intellivision II), and I've had a playstation since who knows when, and I still can't reliably guess which of the four identical buttons will perform a given action in a game, and I can't always remember which position a given icon is. (The Nintendo/Sega thing of labeling them with letters is much easier for me.)

Wii wins on learning curve, and also on accuracy. I don't know how well the PS3's accelerometers will work yet; I do know that, without the pointing device, you can't beat the Wiimote. Best console interface ever.

Re:Why I've adopted my girlfriend's philosophy

[ucblockhead]

Games? You want me to compare a platform's power by the games!?

This is how I compare: In those days (late 80s, not early 90s by the way...no Amigas or Atari ST in the early 90s) I was a MS-DOS developer. I moonlit by writing programming books, including one for the Mac. I also did a proposal for an Atari ST book, and so spent a fair bit of time coding on that thing. At the time, power was roughly equal on the three machines.

But you're ignorance really shows when you talk about games, because the Amiga was, hands down, the most powerful game computer in the late eighties. It was the first computer to have a separate graphics processor and so completely kicked the PC's ass on terms of games.

Re:Why I've adopted my girlfriend's philosophy

[scot4875]

Your example of Win95 vs. whatever version of Mac OS was out at the time is a pretty terrible one.

Say what you want about it, but Win95 was the first end-user-oriented, preemptive multitasking, (poorly) protected-memory operating system. (We won't count OS/2, because we all know that despite its marketing, it was never end-user-oriented) Crow all you want about OSX, but '95 had been through 3 major revisions by the time it showed up, and Win2k showed up at approximately the same time.

And as for it being DOS based, that's meaningless. DOS was used as a loader, nothing more. You wouldn't claim that your favorite Linux release was based on Lilo or Grub because they "run" before the OS does, would you?

--Jeremy

Buyer's remorse

[jours]

I tell you what...for all the hype around these things just a few weeks ago, I've had three chances to buy one (a PS3) in the last few days. One was a friend who bought two of them for Ebay and couldn't sell them at all. The other two times were regular retail stores while I was Christmas shopping. I passed all three times. Not sure why but the price of those things sure made me think twice.

I can certainly see buyer's remorse sneaking in after people play it for a few days and realize that maybe it isn't $500 cooler than their old PS2.

How is this news?

[cdogbert]

People are trading PS3's and Wii's for money, too! Shocking!

From the actual article

[still_sick]

Not the linked article, the article the linked article linked to...

In my search of Austin, I only turned up 6 total people who wanted to trade their PS3 for a Wii, so I moved on to New York City, which boasted a pretty substantial 18 desired trades. Here's where it gets crazy: in San Francisco, there are 48 different PS3 for Wii trades going on at this moment. Now, keep in mind, most of these trades are requesting a Wii plus cash difference, but there is the occasional barter that will take a loss just to get their hands on the latest Nintendo console.

So to summarize - the "occasional" person willing to trade a PS3 for a Wii straight up warrants another Slashdot front-page zOMG SONY IS SO SCREWED wankfest.

The fact that MOST of the trades want the Wii + the cash difference is apparently totally irrelevant. Tell you what, I'm willing to trade my brand new video iPod for some used dental floss and $1,000. Now someone write an article about this amazing new trend of people shunning Apple in favor of OralB!

Re:From the actual article

[shadowmas]

It's ok if people ask for the cash difference the main point of the story is that people seem to prefer having a Wii to a PS3. and this is bad for Sony since if most people regret buying a PS3 and pass on the message to their friends it might tip a few buying decision to the favour of Wii.

on the other hand 70 or so trades out of (i assume) thousands of PS3 sales wouldnt really make much of a difference.

Re:From the actual article

[still_sick]

It's ok if people ask for the cash difference the main point of the story is that people seem to prefer having a Wii to a PS3. and this is bad for Sony since if most people regret buying a PS3 and pass on the message to their friends it might tip a few buying decision to the favour of Wii.

on the other hand 70 or so trades out of (i assume) thousands of PS3 sales wouldnt really make much of a difference.

But how many of the "70 or so" traders NEVER wanted a PS3 - buying them only to resell it for a profit?

Now that EBay prices are nearing MSRP, how many of the people just want to get rid of their 'investment'?

I personally know one person who camped out for a launch PS3 only to resell it, then use the profits to get himself a 'free' Wii and big Plasma TV. His big dreams very quickly shrunk to simply wanting to get rid of the PS3 (that he bought but NEVER wanted) without taking a loss, and just buying a Wii with his own money.

The whole assumption that this is happening because all these people are SO disappointed with their PS3s and the Wii is SO superior is a gigantic leap of logic.

Re:From the actual article

[still_sick]

That's not insightful, and it doesn't make a lick of sense. If someone is willing to trade a PS3 for a Wii + cash, it is essentially the same as wanting to return the PS3 to the store and use the return money to buy a Wii. However, it is impossible to get a Wii at stores right now, and presumably most of these people are unable to return their PS3's for anything other than store credit. If they were trading PS3's for money (i.e. selling) then yes, your cynicism would be warranted. But the idea here is - people are trying to get rid of PS3's and looking to instead try a Wii. The existence of a cash difference doesn't mean anything - other than trying to recoup the losses incurred from buying a $600 console.

Yes, you're right - it IS the same as wanting to return the PS3 to the store and using the return money to buy a Wii.

Except the summary and articles go on to claim that this because the PS3 is this and that and launch titles suck and blah blah blah - which is the ridiculous part. People who bought a PS3 with the intention to sell it never opened it, never tried it, and have NO valid opinions on it or its games.

Claiming that these trades are some indication that Wii > PS3 is just as stupid as claiming that people are selling their Wiis on Ebay because the Wii sucks. No - that's NOT the reason. They're selling it because they bought it to sell it.

Imagine that...

[sammaffei]

..people wanting to play something that's fun. What's the video game industry coming too...

My Humble Opinion

[NetJunkie]

Friend loaned me his PS3. Meh. If Resistance is THE game to own for it right now, save your money. GoW is 10x the game. The new GT HD "concept" demo is pretty good, but as for graphics I think PGR3 looked every bit as good a year ago. Physics in the game? That's a different story. Sony's network implementation leaves a LOT to be desired. I'll happily keep paying my $50/year Live membership over Sony's free offering. I couldn't even use my normal nickname since Junkie is a banned word on their service.

I love consoles and I'm sure I'll end up with one...but it'll be at least 6 months. Luckily I just moved to a 1080p DLP set from my older HD RPTV that didn't do 720p. If I had my old set everything I've played except for GT HD would have been shown in 480p.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

The PS3 doesn't have motion-sensing technology. It has gyros that can sense the controller's tilt. No MEMS accelerometers, and no position sensitivity.

It's a cheap knockoff, and everybody knows it except idiot Sony fanboys.

Re:Wrong, wrong, wrong.

[bucky0]

But it can't detect linear motion, which is what GP was complaining about.

Re:Wrong, wrong, wrong.

[bucky0]

Look, whatever dude. Let me directly quote the entire post again:

The PS3 doesn't have motion-sensing technology. It has gyros that can sense the controller's tilt. No MEMS accelerometers, and no position sensitivity.

It's a cheap knockoff, and everybody knows it except idiot Sony fanboys.

He says that there is no motion-sensing and then states that the gyros can detect the tilt. He's clearly drawing a distinction between the two types of motion. Yes, you're right, the controller detects rotation, but a lot of the cool uses of these controllers comes from detecting linear accelearations and getting spatial information.

This argument is dumb. We're arguing about what an AC said. Good day to you, sir!

Re:Wrong, wrong, wrong.

[Shados]

Because the everyday "street" definition of motion (as opposed to the actual definition), is synonymous with linear motion. When you're rotating the controler, in "everyday" vocabulary, its not moving.

Anyone with a brain capable of critical thinking would have been able to deduce what the poster meant by the tone of the post and its context. While you are correct in your statement, all you're doing is arguing sementics. Just about anyone reading the post would get it, unless they have extremly little deduction skills.

Yeah yeah, the Sixaxis can detect rotating motion. Its still quite limiting. You're almost as bad, trying to make it sound like motion is motion is motion, when the motion detection on the sixaxis is quite limiting in practice.

However, regardless of who's winning the e-pen war, I repeat the main point: the poster was most likely not trying to spred fud or whatever. They simply went with a common everyday (if incorrect) definition of motion. Big freagin deal. Just correct them and be on your way. No need to cry wolf.

Re:Wrong, wrong, wrong.

[Chibi Merrow]

If you are sitting on tyhe deck of a rocking boat, wouldn't the average person conclude that they are moving?

And you'd be right. You are moving relative to the water (but not relative to the boat) however in common parlance, the boat is not "moving", it's rocking. Hence the word you used. Hence the difference between rotation and "movement" the original posted pointed out.

No, I'm not. Motion means motion - there's no room for semantic wriggle-room there.

Well I'd argue that its not undergoing motion since its position isn't changing as it's rotating about its local axes, so if we represent it's pose by a 4x4 homogeneous transform, the 3x3 orientation part would change but it's 3 coordinates in XYZ space would remain constant. Hence it would be rotating but not moving.

I believe the "crying wolf" was on the part of the original poster - who deliberately used inaccurate terminology to stir up slashdot anti-Sony sentiment.

Well, as I said, from my point of view the terminology is much more correct than yours. :) Personally I don't know anything about the sixaxis, but if it only detects changes in orientation it's not a motion sensor per se.

Re:Wii woe

[shaka999]

I know of at least 4 people who would have bought Wii's had they been able to. One of them gave up and got a 360 and the others are so discouraged they probably won't get one at all. Even though Nintendo's launch is being billed as one of the best (if not the best) launch ever I think they really screwed up. They should have picked a country, hyped the machine, and then had enough consoles to let everyone who wanted one get one.

The way it is the excitement is pretty much died down. Many people who would have made the quick impulse won't. Bad move...

PS3 sucks

[mrshowtime]

I own all three systems and generally don't play favourites, but I have had the most fun on the 360, followed very closely by the Wii and I have had NO fun with any of the PS3 games. The PS3's "showcase" game: Resistance: Fall of Man is a joke, a total and utter joke. My friends came over and watched me play the game from the start without sound (we had yet to hook up my Christmas present (new audio system) and were laughing our asses off at how stupid EVERYTHING in the game is. The A.I. is sooooooooo stupid. It sticks it's head out, shoots, takes cover: rinse, repeat. I mean, come on, Half Life, TEN YEARS ago has better A.I. Everything in the game looks cartoony and crappy, especially explosions. I can't believe how anyone is giving RFOM good reviews. Honestly, if you put this game in the PS2 kiosk at a mall, nobody would look twice. I was expecting at least Half Life 2 level graphics, not PS2.5 graphics. Yes, I know super, uber games are coming out this time NEXT year, but that's an awful long wait to shell out $600 bucks (minimum) for what Sony touts as the "true" next-gen. Sony has already lost this war, and everyone knows it. Just look at all of the developers jumping ship, producing 360 versions of supposed PS3 only games. Also, don't forget that the Wii development kit is only $3,000, so you'll see a lot of really fun, inventive, games on the Wii. Sony is in a no-win situation. The public perception is that the 360 is just as powerful, if not more powerful than the PS3 and it costs upward $300. Coupled with the fact that Sony is losing at least $300 on each PS3, it's hard to see how Sony can pull this one out, let alone attain the number one spot again.

Re:PS3 60GB: $630 on eBay

[tgd]

They've been selling well below retail for about ten days now, most of the time.

Silly, actually... once the market dropped I'm surprised people didn't just return them.

I wish I didn't, but I did...

[saunderscc]

...buy a PS3 at launch. It is an abortion. The Wii is fun, but it is a lot of hype, too. The controller is certainly unique, but I don't want to play it for 3 hours at a go. Plus, the graphics are lame. Neither of these have well implemented online infrastructure. I don't care about browsing the internet with a console. I just want to play games with friends around the country. If you can get over the fact that the 360 is a MSFT product, it does what it's supposed to do rather well. Ok, so there's no motion control. I'm already tired of the Wii control scheme. The PS3 is back in its box. Resistance is just another game--it just happens to be THE game for the PS3. Maybe I'll hook it up again when F1 2006 comes out in, wait for it, 2007. In the mean time, I'll have wasted a few hundred hours of my life on XBox Live.

Re:I wish I didn't, but I did...

[Raenex]

The 360 is nice except it's too damn noisy. That and all the games for it assume you have a 50" HDTV (text is always too hard to read).

Re:I think my GFs parents were going to give us a

[spire3661]

Ever hear of a courtesy flush? Nothing wrong shitting and flushing at the same time.

That's what I did

[Eukaryote]

That's literally what I did. I went to Target a day early (the 16th) looking for Wiis at their opening. They didn't have them, but they had a bunch of PS3's, so I bought one.

I ended up trading it today with a friend who got a Wii. I gave him a PS3, he gave me the Wii + 350. Best trade ever.

Re:That's what I did

[dangitman]

I ended up trading it today with a friend who got a Wii. I gave him a PS3, he gave me the Wii + 350. Best trade ever.

Is friendship worth anything to you, though?

Re:I think my GFs parents were going to give us a

[megaditto]

Brian, is that you?

And yes, we will be giving you a PS3. And a Wii and a 360 after tonight. Just LEAVE ALONE MY DAUGHTER.

Re:Wii woe

[Yahweh Doesn't Exist]

>They should have picked a country, hyped the machine, and then had enough consoles to let everyone who wanted one get one.

can work both ways. I live in UK: no PS3 till March. if I had wanted one I would have seen it as them telling me to fuck off and told them the same.

Nintendo launching everywhere as much as possible shows respect to their customers imo. I was able to get a Wii, and so was everyone else who knew about the launch beforehand and was prepared to put a little work in (refreshing amazon.co.uk for 40mins).

expecting to get a Wii straight away when only deciding to get one *after* it has had a massive launch and become a hit is just childish. but telling your customers they can't even think about having one for 4 months is just insulting.

(to all UK PS3-wanters: you only get treated this way because you put up with it.)

Re:Wii woe

[MayorDefacto]

I thought I'd be waiting until at least spring as well, but I just happened to be in my local big-box store two days before Christmas, and they just happened to be stocking the shelves with 5 Wiis as I watched. Apparently they were sitting in the stockroom unnoticed; I grabbed one immediately, as did two other people standing there with me. As I was walking out of the store, a couple of people saw what I had in hand and started *running* towards the electronics department.
Sometimes you just find yourself in the right place at the right time. Christmas miracles really do happen!

Personal Experience

[Chibi Merrow]

Sunday morning (Christmas Eve) about 10AM we met my Dad at Best Buy because he wanted to buy the family a DVR. After wandering around for over an hour (and buying a DVD-R instead, d'oh) we passed a table in the front of the store where a manager type was standing over some boxes. He looked at us and said "Anyone want a PS3?"

I realized he had four PS3s on the table. I said "No, thanks." and kept walking. Chuckling to my fiance about it.

I remembered that a friend of the family was looking for one, so I started a long chain of calls to get in contact with them. Her son arrived a little over an hour later to pick one up.

To see four PS3s sitting on the table.

In the front of the store.

With a guy asking everyone who passed if they wanted one.

On Christmas Eve.

This does not bode well.

Re:Personal Experience

[Stormwatch]

The Dreamcast is probably the most awesome console ever invented

There, fixed it for you.

Re:Link to the original

[dotbenjamin]

0 is a number No it isn't, it's a concept. Whoops!

Correct me if I'm wrong

[glwtta]

Wouldn't that imply that exactly as many people are trading their Wiis for PS3s?

No Wii price drop.

[Shrubber]

Now I'll wait until the strongly rumored January price drop and their appearance in stores.

There is no strongly rumored January price drop, there isn't even a weakly rumored January price drop. There is only a, "one guy said on Slashdot that he thinks there will be a January" price drop.

There will be no price drop. There is no reason for a price drop. Demand still outweighs supply, why on Earth would anyone even consider a price drop?

Re:Link to the original

[crossmr]

Actually its both: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0_(number)#0_as_a_num ber