After the bloodthirsty fervor associated with the initial PS3 launch, common sense seemed to creep back into the minds of Sony’s customers. In consequence, more retailers actually had PS3s in stock, and even more shocking, they couldn’t actually sell the consoles. I personally ran into this at my local EB games and Gamestop, both of which had a pair of PS3s in stock for weeks, much to the employees’ chagrin.

As if Sony wasn’t losing enough money on every PS3 sale, the recent lack of interest in the system has spurred Gamestop into offering a fairly juicy trade-in deal to entice people into actually purchasing the costly system. Specifically, if you trade in your PS2, you will get $100 trade-in value towards a new PS3. While this is fantastic for those of us who were too afraid of the price commitment, the desperate effort to move PS3s off of the shelves is a new low for Sony’s already disastrous launch.

Indeed, it’s no surprise that people are beginning to steer clear of the PS3, since, in addition to the high price, Sony has broken many a promise to their customers. For instance, Sony never made good on their promise to ship 400,000 units by December, and instead shipped a meager 197,000. What I find so adorably precious about this failure is Sony’s insistence that it will ship 6 million units by March. The Wii will probably meet those numbers, but can Sony pull this off? That, my friends, is a resounding fuck no. The fact that Sony can’t sell every one of their shipped consoles is already a market tragedy, but when the market retailers begin sloughing off product like a pair of foul smelling socks, it makes Sony look pretty damned incompetent. I would almost feel remorse for the potentially large spike in future Sony suicides, but then I remember that they tried to push a $600 (plus tax) piece of equipment onto me, when recent screenshots have determined that it’s virtually no better at visual presentation than an Xbox 360. Worse, in some cases. Bastards.

Fortunately for Sony, they sell enough tertiary products to keep the company well in the green. And, of course, selling more systems naturally means that the company will also sell more games, controllers, and other accoutrement, which is where all the money comes from anyway. Nevertheless, every additional dollar lost on a PS3 is another swift kick to Sony’s sac, which by now must be so swollen that it might never sire little console babies again.

-Bedlam-