Gadget Bloggers

As a non-video game fanatic it’s been pretty funny to watch the frenzy over the rollout of Sony’s PlayStation 3 on Friday.  Most notably, police had to fire pepper shot to calm down a crowd of about 200 outside a Circuit City in McLean, Virginia.  If I’d waited for a PS3 outside a store for more than 12 hours, I’m not sure how I’d react if I didn’t come home with one.

For Sony, of course, the rollout of PlayStation 3 is a corporate life-or-death matter.  The $600 units loaded with high-def Blu-Ray DVD technology could help bail out Sony - in a year filled with costly lithium ion laptop battery recalls.  If only Sony could have profited from the resales of the first PlayStation 3s.  eBay Marketplace Research reports that by the end of the day Friday, 832 consoloes had been sold for an average price of $2,921 each.  A few were bid higher than $5,000.  One reportedly went as high as $14,000.

This is all about Sony’s dedication to Blu-ray as its high-def DVD format of choice.  Standalone Blu-ray DVD players have gotten off to a slow start.  The initial Samsung offering is actually more expensive - $1,000 - than a PlayStation 3.  It’s estimated that Sony is losing more than $300 on every PS3 unit it sells - not counting advertising and marketing costs.  Sony is clearly hoping to make its money selling both games and Blu-ray DVDs from its Hollywood movie studio.  (For comparison, Microsoft only loses about $76 on each XBOX 360 it sells.)

CNET is giving PS3 a grudgingly glowing review, calling it “hard to resist” even though its initial game titles are “anemic”.

Compare that to the relatively low-key rollout of Nintendo’s new $250 Wii game console, tomorrow morning.  eBay is selling them for between $400 and $700 - nothing like the five-fold markup for PS3.  $250 is more along the lines of what people expect to pay for a game console.   And its motion-sensitive controller, which mimics a tennis racquet or a baseball bat or a golf club, is a neat looking gimmick. 

CNET calls Wii “ultra-affordable”, lacking in high-def graphics or DVD capabilities, but “hard to resist”.

Now wait a minute - CNET says both of them are hard to resist!  While I’d love to have either one of them as a gift, at $850 I’ll be trying very hard to resist both of them. 

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