PSN Outage Starting To Show At Retail

TSA Staff 185 Comments

“The ongoing PlayStation Network outage is beginning to have an effect on the high street,” Edge is claiming this afternoon.

The respected magazine claims that they have spoken to sources who say there’s a “growing trend of PS3 consoles being traded in for cash or Xbox 360s” in addition to “slumping sales of PSN points cards” and a “shift in the ratio of multiplatform game sales and pre-orders away from PS3”.

Our source, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that from the second week onwards they saw “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.”

Another said that they had seen a “massive increase” in the number of PS3s being traded in, mostly for 360s.

One (Belgian) retailer speaking on the record, Gameswap, said that although gamers commonly trade in their consoles at the end of the month to pay bills, this time around they’re “bringing in PS3s together with all their games and they don’t want money, they want an Xbox 360.”

“In every case it is because of Black Ops and or Modern Warfare 2,” said the retailer.

The same source said it’s affecting game sales too.  “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.”

There’s much more in the Edge article, including signs that people are becoming ever more frustrating with Sony’s customer services.  Remember that this is just from a sampling of retailers, getting the larger chains to talk on the record (or otherwise) would be considerably more telling…

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185 Comments

  1. I think its absolutely ridiculous that people are trading in their PS3 just because the PSN has going down, its not like it will be down forever!

    As some people stated here there is more than just online, like some of the amazing single player campaigns that are out there.

  2. Playstation forever. Sales will blast off again once the beloved psn is back. Trust….

  3. “So these stories about sales being affected by no PSN? Lets look at ShopTo ‘s best sellers list, PS3 – 6 Titles, XBox 3 and PC 1…..”

    http://twitter.com/#!/Envisager_/status/68741919794135042

  4. Sony have really fucked up. I dont care what anyone says, even I was defending them up to like a week of it being off, but for 3 weeks or so its been off now and thats undefendable.

    Of course people will go for a 360 now, a major part of the console is off and people who play online religously will be pissed off.

    Its not only gonna affect Sony this gen but overall as a company and the PR disaster that was this 3 weeks. Get it back up soon Sony otherwise its gonna get much worse.

  5. “Edge is claiming this afternoon” I stopped reading after that, LoL
    That pile of hating cr*p site & magazine! :-/

  6. I,m not surprised at all. Fact is I mainly play online so if I only had a PS3 I could have seen myself dumping it. Fortunately I have an Xbox as well and I always get multiplayer games on Xbox as you can have partys and cross game chat.

    Fact is even when playing PS3 exclusives (Killzone 3, Uncharted etc.) Me and my mates all use the xbox just for the party chat while playing on the PS3.

    I have nothing against Sony at all as they are offering a free service so I don’t expect all the features I want but 4 weeks with no solid info on when it’ll be back is taking the piss!

    I can see a lot of people who only have a PS3 being a lot more pissed off about it than me.

  7. I have one PS3 and I bought one 360 recently (3 days after the PSN goes down) and i want to bought LA Noire and DiRT 3 and maybe Brink (if i get a good price) and i will bought them all for the 360. LA Noire because the RDR was better on the 360, DiRT 3, because i want ONLINE! and Brink, the same as DiRT 3. It’s just logical, because the PSN it’s going down and down… It can arrive to the Live also, but, but….

  8. Dont trade your PS3 your gonna need it for this!!!

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRzKMQHBbQI

  9. If Sony had a clue,… well they’d fix their servers… but if they had 2 clues they’d offer PSN cards for 50% off while the PSN was down. That way people would buy $100s of cards and wouldn’t sell their PS3s since they’d be losing out on bonus cash. But unfortunately they’re too stupid or greedy to incentivize fans DURING their wait. I also wish MS would release the number of new Live accounts created from this time frame so we can get an accurate count of deserters, since I know Sony isn’t never, ever, EVER going to admit that people have traded in their PS3s for an Xbox. I also I kinda expect next years Cod to be a 360 exclusive now since there’s not going to be a huge demand for CoD on the PS3. I think if MW3 sales don’t hit 2 million on PS3 Acti will work out a deal with MS that’s more profitable then developing for the PS3. If that happens it could be “game over” for the PS3. I think Sony right now thinks, “it’s OK, we’ll get’em back with our $499 NGP and our $999 PS4.”

    • Well, when it comes to mainstream games, there’s still GTA, FIFA and NFS. It is sad though that the end of something so overrated and crap as CoD could possibly be the end of a console.

      And this is an English website, so use proper money please ;)

      • The most popular currency in the world isnt “proper money”? ;)

      • They do now, but if the install base drops developers won’t be able to afford to support the PS3 because of cost of development verses return on investment, (it’s already the reason why the PS3 gets so many ports) and that’ll start the downward spiral of a console’s death. Once the “sh@t hits the fan” in this industry, people usually leave the room and never come back. Also it won’t really be CoDs fault, but Sony and the hackers fault instead, but mostly Sony’s for not having a better business plan to deal with what is involved with running a network. As far as “proper money” my PS3 for some reason doesn’t have a key for the Microsoft point symbol. ;)

  10. Hmm there more than enough s.p games to play and when the network returns we have the welcome back programme which should be incentive enough for anyone to keep hold on thier PS.

    Btw…demons souls and uncharted…I rest my case :)

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