PSN Outage Starting To Show At Retail

“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…