Or you could go to shows that, like, actually let you get 10 feet from the artist, which you can’t do with “popular” acts even if you have front-row seats. Plus the music is better.
Ludovic, who is seeing …and You Will Know us by the Trail of Dead tonite at a tiny venue in Orlando tonite.
What did you do, send that message out via smoke signal?
I was not talking about possessing the toy, but camping out for three days to buy one.
If I could get my hands on one it wouldn’t even make it to Ebay. The auction starts in the parking lot. Cash only. Suckers. 
…and on the fourth day, it was sold on E*Bay, in fulfillment of the Scriptures…
What…?
FWIW, I do both. I got seriously burned by scalpers this summer for Madonna tickets - I would say that maybe 60% of the people who got tickets for the Montreal show were fans who lined up for them in person, online, or on the phone. I don’t know of anyone who bought tickets in the pit through conventional channels. It was disgusting and a complete travesty.
I mean, last year I went to see Dar Williams from ten feet away, then gave her a hug after the show, and that was awesome, but M is the love of my life. I can’t stop liking her as much just because she’s the biggest selling female solo artist in the world.
Anyway, back on topic, I agree that 10 consoles for one Wal-Mart is atrocious and I hope Sony gets a smack upside the head. The PS3 is way out of my price range, and the [url=http://carljames.wordpress.com/2006/11/09/hilarious-ps3-vs-wii-ad-a-spoof-of-mac-vs-pc-ads/]commercials[/url[ really offend me.
And so does my coding. That is also offensive. :smack:
It’s front page news here in Albeeeny, GA. When I saw this this morning my first thought was, “Oh look, there’s even more idiots around here than I thought.” Then while reading the article I saw the part about the grandfather who was going to buy it for his grandkids but is now thinking of selling it instead and thought, “The hell! What kind of grandfather does stuff like that!” Then I read further about people who refused to identify themselves because they had ditched school or work to stand in line and thought, “Man, it’d be funny if the school principal or boss rode by and ask how they were doing with that “cold” they called in sick with.”
Nah, there really are even more idiots around here than I thought.
Maybe the grandpa heard the system is buggy and is going to sell it to buy his grandkids better presents.
Given Sony’s woes with the battery recall, and their recent horrible earnings report, it is in their best interest to put as many of these consoles in as many hands as they can during the holiday season, where they are competing with Microsoft and Nintendo for consumer dollars. I believe Sony isn’t delivering because they can’t deliver, not because they don’t want to deliver to “create demand”, which would have been present no matter what. It’s poor planning by Sony and its parts providers. On the other hand, if they waited until they could ship a true critical mass, they would have missed the holidays.
I guess the reason I’m suspicious is because it seems like every time one of these new games comes out, supplies are very limited. It sounds like there’s a lot more to it this time around.
How do you figure? It’s not available just to the rich. It’s available to any fool who wants to camp out for three days in front of the store. These fools can choose to do whatever they want with their purchase, either use it, give it away, sell it, or shoot it out of a cannon. Quite frankly, I, who have a job, cannot get a PS3 because I can’t take the time off work, while some unemployed college student can. (Not that I would camp out in front of a store anyway. I don’t need anything that badly.)
They’re not doing credit checks and asking for proof of income before they sell these things. It’s first come, first served. Wealth has nothing to do with it.
Demand is exceeding supply, so price is going up.
Maybe. This is actually something very hotly debated amongst economists, because in their mind, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
If the first run of consoles are going to sell out no matter what the cost (and obviously, since there is a re-sale market, the cost is way too low to match demand), why not just price them high so that they JUST sell out to begin with and reap all the profit? And then drop the price of the later run so that the price point matches the demand?
I dunno…I bought World of Warcraft for $19.99, and judging by the amount of time I’ve already played it, I expect it’s going to have a *verrrrry * long gamelength for me. 
To bring this back a little more on topic, I’m getting a Wii this Sunday (I stood in line for a couple of hours to get a preorder at GameStop, and felt pretty geeky about it, but now I’m glad I did it). Someday I’ll get a PS3–when the price comes down, they come out with better games (none of the launch games for it appeal to me), and they work the bugs out of it.
They haven’t made the product/ticket/whatever that would make me sit in line for more than maybe 4 or 5 hours. Possibly 8 if it was something I absolutely couldn’t live without and there wouldn’t be any more, ever. For something that there are going to be plenty of in two months? No way. The potential profit of selling it isn’t worth my time, and I can wait for the gameplay experience.
It should be illegal to sell those things for more than the original retail price. That would put a stop to those greedy fucks.
Conspiracies are hard. More often I go with Occam’s Razor - all things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one. It’s not in Sony’s interest to give any person willing to buy a video game unit a reason to choose Microsoft or Nintendo during the holiday season. There are tons of gift givers who will turn to alternatives in order to have something on the eve of the 24th or morn of the 25th.
It’s only available to people who can pay the rape-prices on ebay. Very few people are going to get the things in stores, even if they do stand in line. The end result is still going to be that ordinary working stiffs aren’t going to be able to buy these things for Xmas.
The only bright side is that Sony has reportedly had a lot of technical trouble with these consoles and that has forced down production. I think a lot of these games being sold now are going to have glitches, just like the PS2’s.
Why should it be illegal? Let idiots overpay for the crap. Free market on something that hurts no one. This is not food, fuel oil, basic clothing or even gasoline we are talking about, it is a game console that only currently has a handful of games written to take advantage of its new features.
You position is silly on this one.
Jim
Economists who say that are blind to public perception.
If Sony decides to charge $1,200 for each unit between now and Xmas, they will build up a ton of bad will and negative publicity. Given alternatives in the market, they may permanently lose customers - not the diehards who will purchase no matter what, but the larger segment whom want a game machine and aren’t tied to a certain name brand.