Playstation owners once laughed at the thought of paying yearly for a Xbox Live Gold subscription. Today, after almost three weeks without the PSN, it appears PlayStation 3 owners are trading in their consoles for Xbox 360s at record pace. One major retailer in the UK even reported a 200 percent increase in PS3 trade-ins.
In a classic case of ‘what have you done for me lately’, PlayStation owners are proving their allegiance to the struggling console is not quite what it use to be just three weeks ago. Amidst the difficulties restoring the PlayStation Network, the consensus for some gamers is that now is the time to switch teams.
“People are 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,” Belgian indie retailer Gameswap told Edge. “We’re just ten days into the month and already we have an increase of 200 per cent in PS3s coming into the store compared to all of March. Normally we sell them really fast, but not this time. We’ve only sold 30 to 40 per cent of our inventory right now.”
Fans of history will recall Microsoft suffered a similar fait when the dreaded red-rings-of-death appeared several years ago. To the company’s credit, the replacement process was rather painless, although there were issues in its early goings. Has the PSN outage become Sony’s RROD?
In related Xbox 360 news, on May 19 the Spring 2011 dashboard update should roll out. This will be followed by Avatar Kinect scheduled for May 27. Add in the recent Skype acquisition and Microsoft looks to be sitting pretty, at least in the console wars.
via Ubergizmo
