Edge's sources indicate a growing trend of PS3 consoles being traded in for cash or Xbox 360s, slumping sales of PSN points cards and a shift in the ratio of multiplatform game sales and pre-orders away from PS3. A store manager at a major UK retailer speaking on condition of anonymity. “However from the second week onwards we have seen an increase of over 200 per cent on PS3 consoles being traded in, split almost 50/50 between those trading for cash and those taking a 360 instead.”
At the end of the month, people generally traded in their consoles for money needed to pay bills. But the current trend is not to trade their PS3 with money, but with the 360. In every case it is because of Black Ops and or Modern Warfare 2.
“We’re just ten days into the month and already we have an increase of 200 per cent in PS3s coming into the store compared to all of March. Normally we sell them really fast, but not this time. We’ve only sold 30 to 40 per cent of our inventory right now.” - Tom Mestdagh, of Belgian indie Gameswap
Not only affecting the PS3's sales, the outage has also affected pre-orders and PSN card. Edge's high street source reports that “pre-orders have been cancelled and flipped over to 360 versions of games,” with Mestdagh telling us: “People are cancelling their order of Brink for PS3. People that have an Xbox 360 have switched their pre-orders – others are just cancelling entirely.” Sales of PSN points cards, too, have plummeted over the past couple of weeks.
A lot of people are really dissatisfied with Sony's Customer Service during this outage. “A lot of people have been phoning asking us about personal details on PSN as they are struggling to get a response from Sony themselves. Overall, people that have traded with us seem annoyed at how Sony has handled all of this, and say they would not trust them with details again in the future.”
Although Edge has only surveyed a small sample of retailers, it's only fair to say that the data is quite relevant.
From my observation on the comments on the Playstation Blog, a lot of people are thankful and overjoyed with the PSN restoration. Some are happy, but still a little pissed off with the whole outage. But given the amount of complaining, sarcasm, criticism, given to Sony during the whole outage, it's quite safe to say that quite a number of Sony's fanbase ( especially the "hardcore" fans ), are really pissed off, and stopped supporting Sony's PS3 altogether.
As they say, if you've hit the bottom, then things can only get better. Let's just hope there's no more issue with the restoration, gamers are happy, and Sony can deal with the people that are suing them for the outage and the loss of personal information.
Source : Edge
No comments:
Post a Comment