The Dark Side of the PlayStation 3 Launch 505
An anonymous reader writes "Kotaku is running an article prompted by an email from a foreign student in Japan. The reader unveils the sad reality of the modern gaming industry. Japanese businessmen made ample use of homeless people and Chinese nationals to obtain PS3s for re-sale. There was also a large amount of pushing and shoving, some fights, and almost no police presence at the most crowded stores." From the article: "Based on my observations of the first twenty PS3s sold at Bic Camera, they were all purchased by Chinese nationals, none of whom bought any software. After making their purchase, television crews asked for interviews but all were declined. These temporary owners of PS3s would then make their way down the street where their bosses waited. After several minutes, a dozen PS3s were rounded up, as their Japanese business manager paid out cash to those who waited in line for them. I witnessed a homeless-looking Chinese man, in his sixties or seventies get paid 20,000 yen for his services and was then sent away." Update: 11/12 05:40 GMT by Z : You're right. Sony only shares a portion of the blame here. Offsides on my part.
Sony is supposed to do what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not just Sony's fault (Score:4, Insightful)
The end users who buy from these middlemen are *every bit* as guilty as Sony or the middlemen. If it weren't for these buyers, there would be no market for the middlemen.
How's that guy in the mirror, Zonk? (Score:5, Insightful)
Heaven forbid we blame the scalpers... or the people willing to buy a PS3 at a premium from the scalpers. Why would we do that when there is a giant corporation we can blame for the ills of society? Damn that holiday season, we are helpless against the dynamic duo: Christmas and Sony. Won't somebody think of the children (especially those who will be deprived of a PS3 this christmas?)
Problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? (Score:4, Insightful)
Blaming Sony is ridiculous (Score:5, Insightful)
- float the price high enough to stifle demand (almost there already!)
- somehow make a PS3 un-transferrable (can you imagine the screams?)
- magically come up with more PS3s
- wait until the factories are running full-bore before starting to release any PS3s
Now, concert and sport ticket scalping is another story, but not I think relevant here.
Anyhow IMO blaming Sony for this -- or even really considering it to be a problem -- is pretty mistaken.
Some homeless guys don't get to play with their new PS3s... I'm crying my little heart out here.
What's with the Sony put-down? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, so Sony makes a product, a lot of people want it, some resort to unscrupulous tactics to get them, and somehow that's Sony's fault?
All this Sony bashing is getting ri-goddamned-diculous.
Re:Not just Sony's fault (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sony is supposed to do what? (Score:4, Insightful)
F.U.D.
If Sony produced enough then the same poster will whine about it being released a few months later than it should, and end off with a "Think of the eBay resellers!!!!!111".
If anything blame capitalism, that's right. If the whole world were communist, free standard issued Mao Ze Dong PS3 for each family! No such issues!
What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong, Sony has done a lot of bad shit, and has been very arrogant when it comes to the PS3, but this kind of behavior should be attributed expressly to the consumers. Okay, one might argue that Sony created an artificial shortage (blue laser conspiracy?), but that's no reason someone has to be an asshole. It isn't a necessary product, so the fault lies almost entirely on the consumers.
Come on, Zonk. I'm pretty anti-Sony, too, but you don't need to redirect blame for something like this. There's lots of other stuff Sony has done to be called on.
From an economist... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not just Sony's fault (Score:5, Insightful)
Person A is willing to spend X dollars on a system, but not the time waiting in line.
Person B is willing to spend the time waiting in line to buy a system at Y to sell for X.
End result: both parties satisfied.
The only flaw is that Sony should be taking the profit for this instead of letting third parties do it. Imagine if they used an auction-like system (hey, if google ipo can do it) then the people who value the PS3 most get one, and sony keeps all the profits.
Blame for what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Giving Work To The Homeless (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That's just despicable (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Corporate vs. Personal Responsibili (Score:5, Insightful)
WTF is uncivilized about hiring people who are homeless?
Man, you people have some fucked up values.
Communism (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow, I really don't know where to begin with your post.
The Cell chip is expensive and difficult to manufacture. (Although each cell die has 7 cores, 8 are manufactured on each die in the expectation that one will fail. Post-manufacture testing finds the broken core and disables it, finds no broken cores and disables one anyway, or finds the whole chip ruined and scraps it.) That, and the expensive Blu-Ray drives are difficult to make, too.
They sell at $600 a pop. They'll go on eBay for much more than that, I'm sure. The amount of money Sony could make is limited by how fast they can produce consoles. So, do you think Sony is making consoles as fast as humanly possible, or do you think Sony has no interest in money?
And, under communism, there would be no PS3. What part of a state-run economy do you think values game consoles? Values them enough to invest millions in research and billions in retooling factories for the new tech? State run farms in Russia, China, Cuba, and Venezuela left/leave people starving. You think a system in which people lack "standard issued Mao Ze Dong [sic]" bread are going to have PS3s? Or televisions? I'm sure they'd settle for houses.
You also forget that capitalism is the reason the PS3 exists in the first place - if Sony didn't have a chance to make $bucks, do you think they'd spend years developing the console? Crawl out of your hole and show me a communist nation that even has Playstation 2s? (China ceased to be communist for all practical intents and purposes when they, shock, adopted mostly-free market capitalism as their economic system)
Re:Sony is supposed to do what? (Score:5, Insightful)
In any limited supply launch and it does not have to be a console you are always going to get people who will take advantage of the situation. Normally we call these people "scalpers" and some not so nice names as well, but in reality it is supply and demand. Basically there are people who will pay ridicules prices for something because they are normally too lazy to stand in-line and this is what these people are counting on.
To blame Sony for this is just plain stupid. If people did not want this machine then it would not sell and we know that is not true. What is actually good for Sony here is the fact that the IMHO "idiot" who will pay well over the market rate will most likely have the money to pay for games which is how Games Manufacturers makes money.
I think we can call this a "win" (queue sitter US$170), "win" (scalper US$???? - US$170), "win and loose" (the idiot who buys US$????) and "win" (games - approx US$30 to US$60) and "win" (Sony - percentage of games sold).
Disclaimer. It is my opinion that a person who buys a product way over the its market rate is either very wealthy and an idiot or just a plain idiot. Still without these people scalpers would not exist.
are you fucking kidding me? (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, they only share a portion of the blame? That's awfully magnanimous of you, but just exactly why should they take any blame? What should they have done? NOT sold a PS3 to someone because they looked shabby? Should they have insisted on some sort of contract that the customer signs that promises to not resell it?
This is just shameful. Honestly, did Zonk's mom used to beat him with a playstation or something? The constant Sony-bashing is just insane. And it's not like you have to look real far to find something they actually DID that was wrong.
Re:Corporate vs. Personal Responsibili (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Corporate vs. Personal Responsibili (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Corporate vs. Personal Responsibili (Score:3, Insightful)
Is it greed and exploitation and such a bad thing to you when non-homeless people get jobs?
WTF.
Re:That's just despicable (Score:3, Insightful)
Artificial Scarcity (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:are you fucking kidding me? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:are you fucking kidding me? (Score:4, Insightful)
Waitasec (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is to say, guilty of exactly nothing. Guilty of giving a little bit of paying work to homeless people. Anybody thought to ask the homeless people what they thought of the deal? No that would make too much sense.
What a stupid troll article, the only interesting thing is how many responders took the bait uncritically.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Communism (Score:2, Insightful)
Zonk is on something (Score:1, Insightful)
The retail establishment clearly did not prepare for the launch properly, and was clearly unable to control the mob that gathered. They should have requested police prescense as soon as they saw the line was starting to become excessively large (when a single file line turns into a 10 people standing next to each other file line, its time to call the cops).
Sony did not ask rich Japanese men to pay poor/homeless Chinese people $200 to basically hang out in a line and buy a console from a store (pretty good deal, I'd do it, especially if I was homeless). It's not like the Chinese were being asked to dance naked and pleasure themselves. If anything, the rich Japanese guys who paid them to stand in line were doing them a FAVOR.
I worked in retail consumer electronics through two generations of hardware launches (PS1 to PS2) and I can tell you that this shop was totally unprepared for the launch. You can see maybe like, one , two employees tops (we had a quarter of our staff of 40 for PS1, and over half for PS2), we had requested two uniformed police officers almost a month in advance for crowd control (and we got them, of course), and the second time around (For DC/PS2/Xbox/Xbox360), we waited til around 7am and handed out vouchers to people who were lined up, guaranteeing them a console if they returned to the store before noon and presented the voucher. Best Buy did the same thing when I went there on GameCube's launch day to get a GC for myself. They handed out vouchers a bit after 7am; that way, NO LINE, NO MESS
I hate Sony just as much as most of you; but stop trying to pin the blame on them when they have absolutely NO REASON to shoulder any of the blame.
You can't stop people from paying other people to buy them PS3s. What are you going to do, kick all the Chinese out of the line? Granted, in Japan, that really wouldn't be an issue (for all you Japanophiles who are unaware or in denial, Japanese are EXTREMELY racist, particularly towards Chinese, among others), but you can't just go kicking people out of line when they've been there all night.
Further, the Japanese as a whole are very passive, and thus I'm not surprised that nothing was done about the cutting, but, come on. Once it started getting THAT out of hand, SOMEONE (if anything, the employees) should have done something.
As you can see, plenty of places to lay the blame, but I haven't mentioned Sony.
Why?
BECAUSE IT'S NOT THEIR FAULT.
Nice (Score:5, Insightful)
Sony have taken a lot of flak lately, and it's probably been mostly justified. This, however, is the shittiest smear-job I've ever had the misfortune to read on this site. I won't be returning to the site after this post, at least once this story has run its course (so if there's any replies to this I'll answer)
How in the name of Zeus's butthole does Sony bear any responsibility whatsoever for the actions of people who aren't Sony employees? Did Sony direct these people to hire the homeless? Did Sony force anyone into doing anything, in any way? If a guy kills another guy so he can steal his PS3, will it be Sony's fault for making it? Of course not, all of these suggestions are absurd. So why attempt to shoehorn Sony into this, trying to heap more hate and blame on a company which already has so much you can fairly criticize it for?
Criticize us about rootkits, about batteries, about E3 presentations or too much hype, about perceived arrogance or copying Nintendo or making PS3 too expensive or not having enough of them, or about the quality of our hardware or software. You don't even have to make it constructive criticism, if you don't want to. But please, for the love of whatever, criticize us for those things we're at least partly responsible for! The actions of completely unrelated third parties aren't our bloody fault!
Anyway, enough from me. I've had a
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Corporate vs. Personal Responsibili (Score:3, Insightful)
Or free food at all.
And that charity thing. That just has to stop.
Re:Corporate vs. Personal Responsibili (Score:3, Insightful)
Since they actually have to do something for the money I guess it is obvious why your statement is simply stupid?
Re:Communism (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not just Sony's fault (Score:2, Insightful)
The problem with what you saying is that the logic is indeed correct but based on false assumptions.
Biggest false assumption is that without government there will be noone 'forcing' borders and tarrifs and what not onto you, and that is actually true for many of the things you blame on 'government interference'. I am not saying that governments do not interfer, but you are dead wrong to believe that if they'd stop their interference, that it would not be replaced by something that is likely even more interfering.
Exploitation? Hardly. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sony is supposed to do what? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Communism (Score:2, Insightful)
Capitalist run farms in Africa and Asia leave people starving. While people are poor in Cuba and Venezuela, nobody is starving, despite the best efforts of the US to make that happen.
Also there was a fair amount of entertainment available in the Soviet Union. They had great classical orchestras, ballets, and their sports were the best in the world. Now only the elite could afford these things, but then how many of the 5 billion people in the capitalist world can afford to buy a PS3 for $600, let alone the thousands of dollars they sell for on ebay?
Another interesting thing about a socialist system is that you don't see people thrown in jail for DMCA violations. Copyright is an ugly hack to make creativity profitable in a capitalist system. In a socialist system, the state pays the artist and the artist can be free to create art without having to install rootkits onto your computer.
I am a huge supporter of capitalism. In most industries privately run businesses are the most efficient ways of doing things. But the problem with capitalism is the same as the problem with communism. Its round by people and people do stupid things. Socialism works very well in situations involving public goods. Capitalism is ideal in situations that allow for competition.
Re:Not just Sony's fault (Score:3, Insightful)
I always thought it would be smart and nice for items with high demand on launch and not enough supply to do something like what you suggested. Auction the items off to the highest bidders. However, only take a cut of what the retail price will be and donate the rest of the money to charity. And when supply starts to match demand, then fall back to the current system.
Sony are not blameless. (Score:3, Insightful)
So that they can get the "PS3s sell out in 2 hours" headlines.
So they get press coverage like this about people auctioning them.
So the PS3 pricetag doesn't look so bad compared to the $1000 or more it sells for on Ebay. Hell, it's "only" $500, must be a good deal, right?
I fully accept they may have had shortages of components or other manufacturing issues. However, the launch date and the amount of stock they had available was *entirely* under their control (As Europe has found out - they've pushed that back far enough). They could have pushed the launch back a month and had half a million units available to launch. But, they would have missed out on the media frenzy.
The deceitful activities going on by the businessmen mentioned in the article is a logical response to this sort of launch. By no means am I condoning this behaviour, but it's naive to think that Sony didn't reckon this would happen - they *wanted* it to happen. They don't care if Joe Gamer gets his machine, they care about it becoming an object of frenzied desire and generating newspaper column inches.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Communism (Score:5, Insightful)
Is NOT ok for a foreign person to hire a homeless guy to wait in line for a PS3.
I feel sick right about now.
Re:Nice (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Communism (Score:2, Insightful)
Do you mean to say that Cuba is only economically depressed because Americans can't buy Cuban cigars directly?
Do you mean to say that an economic blockade by the US has no economic effect on Cuba? Guess what, it's not one extreme or the other, but somewhere in the middle. Welcome to reality.
What do you think would happen to the economy of the United States if China stopped trading with us? What about if they refused to trade with any country that traded with the US? What if there weren't many politically/economically/militarily powerful countries willing to stand up for us and tell China to fsck off? You can't discount the effect of international trade (or the lack thereof) on a modern economy.
Re:Communism (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Linux and Communism (Score:2, Insightful)
Really? I was under the distinct impression that outside motivation often leads to laziness, corner-cutting, and generally reduced performance [gnu.org]. You actually hit on a couple very important points in those few sentences, but you got your interpretation backwards.
With a small homogenous population that has a decent work ethic, socialism works fine. The problem is that there are immigrants who don't share the same values
It's not that those populations inherently have a decent work ethic and are thus able to make socialism work, nor does it have anything to do with the size or homogeneity of the population. It's just that societies without a system that stifles a sense of internal motivation produce people with a decent work ethic by default. On the other hand, immigrants who grew up with capitalism have learned to need outside motivation to be productive (read the link above) -- as you essentially state, they're the ones who lack the decent work ethic, not the ones native to socialism.
In other words, the problem is not that socialism doesn't give much outside motivation -- the problem is that capitalists tend to be lazy without outside motivation.
Imagine an analogous situation, where a parent gives their child candy whenever they finish their homework before supper, but of course doesn't allow their child candy under normal circumstances. As the research summarized in the above link suggests, the child becomes focussed on doing the homework as a means to an end -- a way to get candy. Then parent has to go on a business trip for a couple days, and asks a friend to watch the child, but forgets to mention the candy-homework deal. The first day, the child tests the boundaries, and asks for some candy; the friend gives the candy. So, the child doesn't do their homework, and merely pretends to work on it. Is the existence of this situation the fault of the friend for having given the candy without asking something in return, or is it the fault of the parent for teaching the child only to do homework for candy? Your post blames the friend, I blame the values taught by the parent.
Re:Communism (Score:3, Insightful)