If I knew I could of got a 46 inch Bravia that cheaply, I would of queued up, payed my 450 quid, then kicked the PS3 down the street like an expensive George Foreman Grill-Looking football, while gentally carressing the TV I just got for under a third of its actual price. Well maybe not... But having to bribe people with £1500+ tellys just to queue up for a 450 quid console that isn't selling in the numbers any retailers expected seriously smacks of desperation.
Best news is that because the launch wasn't the sell out success pretty much EVERY ANTICIPATED CONSOLE SINCE THE PS1 HAS BEEN* Every money grabbing wanker on Ebay is officially fucked! Whos going to buy a PS3 at an over inflated Ebay price, when you can just buy one in a shop for the regular, still over inflated but not quite so much price.
Auctions are being either cancelled/just plain failing to deliver (if they were stupid enough to put no reserve), or on the ones with starting bids over the retail price, noone is bidding on them at all!
Bottom line - at the price it is, PS3 REALLY isn't worth it.
As a games machine, there is literally nothing that isn't already coming out on the cheaper and at least in terms of games playing "technically similar" Xbox 360 (not counting 1st party titles which obvously wouldnt be multiformat anyway, which in all honesty don't grab me in any way) Sony have already lost their exclusivity on GTA, Virtual Fighter 5, Mercanaries 2, Devil May Cry 4, The next Final Fantasy is being developed "Platform Independant", leaving them with MGS4 as the only current big third party exclusive, and dont think Konami wont jump too if they start believing they wont make enough profit. And then theres the fact that for the extra money that Europeans are paying they are getting an INFERIOR version of the machine that the US and Japan got.
As a next generation multimedia device - I think I'll wait, thanks. Not enough of a library of Blu Ray films, or HD-DVD for that matter, I think the technology is far too early to bother with, and early adopters always get the shaft. Rather wait until the price goes down, and the library of films out on the format goes up, and the obvious release of a dual/multi format player to get the best of all worlds. Until then I'm perfectly happy with my upscaling home theatre setup and my DVDs, which im really not that fussed about replacing for HD versions just yet, thanks... And I honestly think that's a similar opinion to most of the electronics buying public - Its the same kind of apathetic "It'll do" attitude that kept VHS in the market for so long.
All you tech-hungry geeky spods out there... put yourself in the shoes of regular Joe Public for just ONE FUCKING SECOND. The same Joe Public that kept VHS in the market long after it's lifespan, the same Joe Public that couldn't be arsed with Laserdisc/Minidisc/DVD Audio/All sorts of other junk, because the stuff they already owned, and built up a collection of, "will do"...
- Who cares about HDMI when VGA/Component will do? (Hell most "regular" people havent even gone that far and are still connecting shit via SCART or composite)
- Who cares about Bluray/HD-DVD when DVD will do?
- Fuck it... Who cares about 1080/720p when 480/576i will do?
I mean, for fucks sake, most people wouldn't even be switching to some kind of digital broadcasting for their TV channels if the government wasn't forcing the switchoff of analogue terrestrial television!
Sony pushed themselves too far, expected far too much from the public, and until the public's expectations catch up with Sony (or Sony drop theirs), they've pushed themselves out of the market.
This has been Mentuss, your misanthropic source of common sense and anger, signing off. Now Fuck off, you bunch of cunts... I've got games to play on a console that was worth the money. No... not the PS3, you cynical bastards.
*if you believe Sony's spin, they delivered over enough stock to cope with demand. Yeah. Thats it. Thats why every retailer so confident they were going to sell all their pre-allocated stock before release, breaking into desperation when it started becoming painfully obvious noone was going to pay that much money.
