I've known for a little while now I wasn't going to bother with the PS3 unless some truly unique titles come up and the price subsequently drops so buying one at launch was a no-no for me but once I found out only two of my friends were getting them (and I have a lot of geeky friends) I knew Sony were in trouble.
A quick browse shows Amazon.co.uk still have some available, Play have them left, hell even my local HMV here on the tiny island of Guernsey had over 100 unallocated at lunch today and had canceled their midnight launch event - albeit for 'technical' reasons.
People on eBay have been finding their pre-order auctions not even meeting their cost price and looking at the negative feedback they are refusing to honour them now.
How could Sony have screwed this up so much? Take your pick:
- Shafting Europeans with a 33% price increase over the Americans? ($599 vs £425 vs €599)
599 USD = 304 GBP = 449 EUR - Cutting backwards compatibility when costs aren't even passed on to the consumer?
But as we have made clear before, in the future our resources will be increasingly focused on developing new services and entertainment features exclusively for PS3, rather than on delivering PS2 backwards compatibility.
- Forcing Europeans to buy the more expensive model - because "that's what they demand"
Responding to retail and consumer demand, SCEE confirmed that initially only the 60GB model would be available, with the 20GB model to follow later in the year dependent on demand.
- Forcing Blu-Ray upon consumers when they have failed with so many proprietary formats already?
- Repeated delays?
15 March 2005, November 2006, 23 March 2007 - Nothing worth playing at launch?
27 launch titles, 6 exclusive titles for sale plus Gran Turismo HD Concept free download. Gran Turismo HD Concept looks interesting ... but not £425 to play essentially a demo interesting. Resistance: Fall of Man and MotorStorm are the top selling titles with EuroGamer scores of 6 and 8 respectively. - Pathetic attempt at on-line service in the face of Xbox Live!?
- Dropping rumble in exchange for a not-as-good-as-Wii movement sensor?
- That Sony are so full of themselves they think being expensive is something to be proud of?
Jeff Minter, writing in his regular column for Edge, said:They seem absolutely certain that even when they say it's going to be considerably more expensive than existing consoles... nevertheless us eager customers will rush out in droves to buy it because it's, hey, a new PlayStation." ... "incredibly arrogant."
Of course it comes down to just one thing: Give people what they want, not what you want them to have.
I doubt Sony can stop their downward trend whilst they exude arrogance that sounds like "you'll take this and you'll like it - we're Sony".
In order to try and save face Sony performed a PR stunt by giving away 46" HD TV's to everybody who brought a PS3 at the Virgin London store. This would hopefully mean the press and sites would write about this instead of poor turnout or nothing at all - a snip at £250,000 to Sony. Check out the BBC, GameIndustry.biz or UK Resistance for coverage of the launch event.
Update
Yeah, pathetic turn-out all round with reports of media outnumbering shoppers at a couple of events, general disappointment and even big venues getting under 100 people. On-line retailers such as Amazon and Play have plenty left.
Last night 50 regional HMV stores were open for midnight launches across the country, and "at least" 1,000 units had been sold, according to Ellis.
...only 100 or so people came to the event, as opposed to the 1,500 or so who queued for a Wii, or the 3,000 who turned up for the World of Warcraft expansion pack
[)amien