People Swapping PS3s for Wiis?

An anonymous reader writes "To add to Sony's problems with the PS3 launch, it now appears that some Playstation 3 owners are trying to trade their PS3s for Wiis. The author writes: 'There's also speculation that people want the Wii because the PS3s best game is Resistance: Fall of Man. This, of course, forget that there are plenty of cool PS3 games on the way, and the PS3 has its own motion sensing technology, which, while not as good as the Wii, is still pretty cool and opens up Sony to emulate some of the Wii's successes.'"

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Buyer's remorse

[jours]

I tell you what...for all the hype around these things just a few weeks ago, I've had three chances to buy one (a PS3) in the last few days. One was a friend who bought two of them for Ebay and couldn't sell them at all. The other two times were regular retail stores while I was Christmas shopping. I passed all three times. Not sure why but the price of those things sure made me think twice.

I can certainly see buyer's remorse sneaking in after people play it for a few days and realize that maybe it isn't $500 cooler than their old PS2.

From the actual article

[still_sick]

Not the linked article, the article the linked article linked to...

In my search of Austin, I only turned up 6 total people who wanted to trade their PS3 for a Wii, so I moved on to New York City, which boasted a pretty substantial 18 desired trades. Here's where it gets crazy: in San Francisco, there are 48 different PS3 for Wii trades going on at this moment. Now, keep in mind, most of these trades are requesting a Wii plus cash difference, but there is the occasional barter that will take a loss just to get their hands on the latest Nintendo console.

So to summarize - the "occasional" person willing to trade a PS3 for a Wii straight up warrants another Slashdot front-page zOMG SONY IS SO SCREWED wankfest.

The fact that MOST of the trades want the Wii + the cash difference is apparently totally irrelevant. Tell you what, I'm willing to trade my brand new video iPod for some used dental floss and $1,000. Now someone write an article about this amazing new trend of people shunning Apple in favor of OralB!

Re:Why I've adopted my girlfriend's philosophy

[HappySqurriel]

To be honest, the reason I believe that Nintendo has been so successful (so far) with the Wii is that they recognized a need in the market and they built a system to fill that need. Essentially, Nintendo thought that there was a need for an inexpensive, easy to develop for, arcade-like system that could provide a new game play experience; and that is what they delivered.

Not to be too negative about the PS3, but the PS3 is designed to be "Exactly like every other system in history ... only better" whereas the Wii is designed to be "Something different". In my opinion the Wii is successful because of how unique it is.

Re:Wii woe

[shaka999]

I know of at least 4 people who would have bought Wii's had they been able to. One of them gave up and got a 360 and the others are so discouraged they probably won't get one at all. Even though Nintendo's launch is being billed as one of the best (if not the best) launch ever I think they really screwed up. They should have picked a country, hyped the machine, and then had enough consoles to let everyone who wanted one get one.

The way it is the excitement is pretty much died down. Many people who would have made the quick impulse won't. Bad move...

Nintendo needs to step up production

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it looks like the PS3 might go the way of the Dreamcast, and they are going to have a lot of extra hungry consumers. For all it's perceived worth, the PS3 is worth much...yet. It will be, if it lives long enough. But let's face it, we need them to come in third place or lose. Just like we needed Nintendo to come in 3rd/lose, like what happened. Winners become assholes, just like Nintendo once was, just like Sony is now, and just like MS will be(in the console world). But, it would be best if Sony doesn't completely quit. One thing that I wish never happened was SEGA's withdrawal from the race. It created less competition. Now if Sony's nightmare scenario comes true, and the PS3 fails, and they have to withdraw, or worse, they sell the gaming division to MS(most likely), I wonder if SEGA might jump back in.

I wish I didn't, but I did...

[saunderscc]

...buy a PS3 at launch. It is an abortion. The Wii is fun, but it is a lot of hype, too. The controller is certainly unique, but I don't want to play it for 3 hours at a go. Plus, the graphics are lame. Neither of these have well implemented online infrastructure. I don't care about browsing the internet with a console. I just want to play games with friends around the country. If you can get over the fact that the 360 is a MSFT product, it does what it's supposed to do rather well. Ok, so there's no motion control. I'm already tired of the Wii control scheme. The PS3 is back in its box. Resistance is just another game--it just happens to be THE game for the PS3. Maybe I'll hook it up again when F1 2006 comes out in, wait for it, 2007. In the mean time, I'll have wasted a few hundred hours of my life on XBox Live.

Re:Why I've adopted my girlfriend's philosophy

[Medgur]

There is no such thing as a former Dreamcast fan. There are only Dreamcast fans who lament its early commercial demise.

Re:Why I've adopted my girlfriend's philosophy

[2ms]

It was so funny I remember people talking about how the PS2 was going to be a supercomputer not allowed into certain countries because it was so powerful it could give them nukes and how its emotion engine was going to make gaming almost indistinguishable from the real world. It was the biggest sham in the world. There were several games that actually looked better on Dreamcast than they did on the PS2.

This is actually the strategy that MS has used whenever Macs start getting a lot of attention. MS always says they have an OS with everything that Mac has Plus a whole bunch of new things that are going to revolutionize everything. And then the OS comes out five years late with, not only nothing revolutionary, but not even having the things Mac had 5 years earlier (two most salient examples: Win95 was supposed to be all new OS but at last second was switched to DOS at heart, Vista was supposed to have all these new techs yet now, years late, it's just terribly resource intensive XP with copy of Mac Aqua GUI).

I think this is Sony's strategy. They come up with these catchy names to go along with console like Emotion Engine or Cell (which really just another IBM chip only with more spikes and valleys in its capabilities -- not net positive) and trumpet them like nothing has ever been trumpeted before in front of would-be other console buyers for two years ahead of actual release just so that people will figure they better wait until the PS comes out because it is going to be teh omg SO revolutionary. Which it never is. Rant over. It just funny. It's sort of a total business model.

Re:Why I've adopted my girlfriend's philosophy

[cgenman]

To expand on this, I've tried putting a PS2 dual-shock into the hands of new players, like my girlfriend and my mother. "What's this?" they inevitably ask. It's an intimidatingly big mass of buttons, switches, diodes, etc. Add a "Wii-like" tilt sensor, and you just make something even LESS accessible.

Compare that to the Wii. It's a remote control that points. Everyone can play wii bowling. Everyone can navigate the metagame without wondering if they should use the d-pad or the left or right analog sticks. It's intuitive. You don't have to think as much about it. You can just get on with the business of playing games.

In addition to inexpensive, easy to develop for, unique, and short-time period experiences, the Wii also provides the instant accessibility that is sorely lacking in today's systems. Learning to play Rockstar's Table Tennis on the 360 takes about 1/2 hour. Learning to play Tennis on the Wii takes about 10 seconds. That's a huge difference if you're just trying to relax for a moment between sending the kids off to school and leaving for work yourself.

Re:From the actual article

[shadowmas]

It's ok if people ask for the cash difference the main point of the story is that people seem to prefer having a Wii to a PS3. and this is bad for Sony since if most people regret buying a PS3 and pass on the message to their friends it might tip a few buying decision to the favour of Wii.

on the other hand 70 or so trades out of (i assume) thousands of PS3 sales wouldnt really make much of a difference.

Re:Wii woe

[Yahweh Doesn't Exist]

>They should have picked a country, hyped the machine, and then had enough consoles to let everyone who wanted one get one.

can work both ways. I live in UK: no PS3 till March. if I had wanted one I would have seen it as them telling me to fuck off and told them the same.

Nintendo launching everywhere as much as possible shows respect to their customers imo. I was able to get a Wii, and so was everyone else who knew about the launch beforehand and was prepared to put a little work in (refreshing amazon.co.uk for 40mins).

expecting to get a Wii straight away when only deciding to get one *after* it has had a massive launch and become a hit is just childish. but telling your customers they can't even think about having one for 4 months is just insulting.

(to all UK PS3-wanters: you only get treated this way because you put up with it.)

Re:From the actual article

[still_sick]

It's ok if people ask for the cash difference the main point of the story is that people seem to prefer having a Wii to a PS3. and this is bad for Sony since if most people regret buying a PS3 and pass on the message to their friends it might tip a few buying decision to the favour of Wii.

on the other hand 70 or so trades out of (i assume) thousands of PS3 sales wouldnt really make much of a difference.

But how many of the "70 or so" traders NEVER wanted a PS3 - buying them only to resell it for a profit?

Now that EBay prices are nearing MSRP, how many of the people just want to get rid of their 'investment'?

I personally know one person who camped out for a launch PS3 only to resell it, then use the profits to get himself a 'free' Wii and big Plasma TV. His big dreams very quickly shrunk to simply wanting to get rid of the PS3 (that he bought but NEVER wanted) without taking a loss, and just buying a Wii with his own money.

The whole assumption that this is happening because all these people are SO disappointed with their PS3s and the Wii is SO superior is a gigantic leap of logic.

Re:Wrong, wrong, wrong.

[bucky0]

Look, whatever dude. Let me directly quote the entire post again:

The PS3 doesn't have motion-sensing technology. It has gyros that can sense the controller's tilt. No MEMS accelerometers, and no position sensitivity.

It's a cheap knockoff, and everybody knows it except idiot Sony fanboys.

He says that there is no motion-sensing and then states that the gyros can detect the tilt. He's clearly drawing a distinction between the two types of motion. Yes, you're right, the controller detects rotation, but a lot of the cool uses of these controllers comes from detecting linear accelearations and getting spatial information.

This argument is dumb. We're arguing about what an AC said. Good day to you, sir!

Re:Wrong, wrong, wrong.

[Chibi Merrow]

If you are sitting on tyhe deck of a rocking boat, wouldn't the average person conclude that they are moving?

And you'd be right. You are moving relative to the water (but not relative to the boat) however in common parlance, the boat is not "moving", it's rocking. Hence the word you used. Hence the difference between rotation and "movement" the original posted pointed out.

No, I'm not. Motion means motion - there's no room for semantic wriggle-room there.

Well I'd argue that its not undergoing motion since its position isn't changing as it's rotating about its local axes, so if we represent it's pose by a 4x4 homogeneous transform, the 3x3 orientation part would change but it's 3 coordinates in XYZ space would remain constant. Hence it would be rotating but not moving.

I believe the "crying wolf" was on the part of the original poster - who deliberately used inaccurate terminology to stir up slashdot anti-Sony sentiment.

Well, as I said, from my point of view the terminology is much more correct than yours. :) Personally I don't know anything about the sixaxis, but if it only detects changes in orientation it's not a motion sensor per se.

Re:I wish I didn't, but I did...

[Raenex]

The 360 is nice except it's too damn noisy. That and all the games for it assume you have a 50" HDTV (text is always too hard to read).

No Wii price drop.

[Shrubber]

Now I'll wait until the strongly rumored January price drop and their appearance in stores.

There is no strongly rumored January price drop, there isn't even a weakly rumored January price drop. There is only a, "one guy said on Slashdot that he thinks there will be a January" price drop.

There will be no price drop. There is no reason for a price drop. Demand still outweighs supply, why on Earth would anyone even consider a price drop?