So making my morning rounds through the local online classifieds section, I noticed something strange, almost all of the ps3's listed yesterday (nov 17) at outrageous prices, were listed again today with prices cut significantly. Strange, I thought. So I check ebay and sure enough the prices for the 60gb are only fetching ~$1200, down about half from the day before craziness. Obviously one would expect this, but not really one day after its release. What gives, are people finally realizing how overhyped this system is? If this continues, I might just pick one up sooner that I had thought since I think many of the craigslisters in my area may end up getting stuck with taking retail price for there machines. In other news, I don't know if anyone here frequents somethingawful.com, but their lambasting of the current consoles was pretty funny (link), much of it topical to some of the stuff I've read on this forum ;-)
It's the free market at work. Remember, demand drives prices. Initial demand was high because everybody and their brother wanted to be a game store and make a quick killing by reselling online/on eBay. But you can't count that as real demand, for the same reason game companies can't claim ship numbers as sell-through numbers. What counts is when the end user (not a middleman) actually buys the product. When the majority of the demand is from the middlemen and not the end consumer, prices are going to drop once all the middlemen get their systems. -hl718
there's only a limited number of people who would give as much money as the first-day ebay adopters that paid insane amounts.
My sentiments exactly, however expressed far more eloquently than I ever could. But, the initial demand was obviously spurred by early adopters and not just middleman. I mean, they were selling for $2k-$3k no problem. And it obvsiously wasn't middleman buying these because you can't really turn around and resell them at a profit (you have to pay $500-$600 initially to do that). Am I to assume that there was only a small percentage of people willing to pay $whatever$ to get a unit, and now that they have theirs, the middleman are nearly stuck in the water? edit: barcode beat me to it It seemed to me like 360 scalping stayed pretty high and actually got worse as xmas got closer. I remember waiting for the console to go down quickly, but did not see that in the local classifieds until the beginning of this year.
games are important too you see. If there was this one game no one could live without (a title/legend such as Perfect Dark , that just by its name calls gamers, although the game was shite) then yes, demand will stay high. Imagine if the PS3 launched with its own rendition of HD-Zelda or MGS. The madness..
Don't count out the "desperate parents" market yet. Ebay is getting saturated with PS3's right now, but the supply will probably dwindle down before Christmas. Sure, Sony has said that they are doing daily shipments, but those will be so sporadic that they will have little to no effect.
were the $2k-$3k sales actually done though? There were a bunch of shill bids and assclowns going around jacking up the auctions. I kinda doubt people would pay $2k for a ps3
When I was in line I remember hearing alot of people saying that they were going to wait until about two weeks pre-XMas before selling their systems. It was figured ebay would get flooded and demand would temporarily drop, but would eventualy rise again when the said "desperate parents" market appeared. Looks like they may have been right.
+1 Wait until mid-December. The $3k+ prices WILL return. Just like the X360, the highest prices will be just before xmas when the parents get REALLY desperate. I'm on eBay right now buying any 60GB unit ending under $900. I'm about to make up for my shitty launch day.
I wouldn't count on it. Look back to the PS2 launch. eBay was crazy right after the launch. By Xmas, you were lucky to get $50 over retail for a PS2 on eBay. -hl718
I would not count on prices going up. What I saw this weekend in most stores is 360's starting to sell out. Many people were coming in and if they could not get a PS3 or WII they were buying 360's . I would really like ot see how 360 sales did this weekend to see who the real winner of this weekend was.
I don't think it'll have anything to do with desperate parents. But didn't stores like best buy stockpile 360's and then have a 2nd launch? I don't see that being different than the ps3's now. The supply will go down and ebay prices will still be high. Then in december, the stock will go back up once they have their "second" launch...
