Disturbing Market Trends, Demand for video game consoles exploited

Well today I'm going to do a little investigative reporting for all of you.

We're all well aware of the hype surrounding our newest favorite consoles, and the associated supply/demand issues between them in the first week of their release. Today is the official beginning of the second week for the PS3 in fact, but what I did today was make a rather simple observation. We're already well aware that the hardware to software ratio doesn't look amazing on the Playstation 3 this early in the game. And that tons of campers sat in front of their local electronics stores just hoping to make a buck off reselling what they presume to be a very hot product.

Whatever the real reason for people buying these consoles is, it's clear that the news stories about reselling the PS3s are not really very slanted.



Here we are, a good week after the release of this console; and there are still 23,000 auctions related to the product. Of those, I found that roughly 10,000 were sales of the actual console. 10,000 isn't a very big number when you want to talk about making a success out of your game console, but considering the real numbers we got here (200,000 if you're an optimist), versus what showed up in Japan (89,000 consoles) I think this is a little disturbing just how big of a resale percentage (5-10%) we're seeing. Keep in mind this is just from Ebay, and as you surely know, it's not the only online auctioneer out there. Now I'm not upset just because of price gouging, but also because I know there are plenty of people on websites like this that lament daily that they do not have their Wii, or they do not have their PS3. In fact there are even some people on here that went out and bought multiple systems.

I'm not one for trying to scribe unwritten rules but, when it's this close to the holiday season, when you know demand is low; and it takes that extra effort to even find a specific console. Would it kill you to limit yourself to one, so that real fans aren't left wanting?

While reselling of any product is inevitable through channels like Ebay, I hope the same consumers that nitpick about the smallest things with their new consoles, end up showing some buyer's responsibility in not manufacturing a PS3 Marketplace on Ebay. The reality of it is that far fewer Wii systems are up for sale online, not because of demand not being as high, but because the return on reselling it isn't as great; that and of course many stores were restocked today; as they will be time and again until hopefully we forget about this hazing ritual for our new gaming children... I mean devices.

I feel kinda bad cause my uncle was going to by the PS3 for this reason.
Awsome study though.

I wouldn't feel bad about it. There's a lot of people I've talked to and the first idea that's popped into their head is to resell a PS3 or Wii (if they weren't interested in playing videogames). It's too bad this notion comes before anything else though : (

My brother was also planning on doing this, and is kicking himself now for not.