Fun With Headlines

I know that most of you have probably seen the news stories about people standing in line for the last few days to get a Sony PlayStation 3. For every person who is standing in line, there appear to be about 20 who are scouring Ebay in the hopes of bidding on one. As a result, this $600 device is being sold on the secondary market for upwards of $3000.

This is stupid. There is no reason to have a piece of $600 equipment for five times it's retail price, with a limited number of games (around 20) at release time. Plus, if you are any sort of technology connoisseur, you would know better than to buy any piece of equipment on version 1.0. Doesn't anyone remember what happened with the first batch of XBox 360's? They had problems. Then as the shipments of the systems progresses, we stop hearing about problems as much.

Speaking of XBox 360's, let me give a word of advice to all the people who are thinking about bidding on a PS3 this week on Ebay. I have an idea that will save you a ton of money if you have a little bit of patience.

Spend $200 on Accessories like controllers, batteries for controllers, etc.

Spend $200 on three games to hold you over for a few months.

You have spent $800 on Xbox 360 to solve your video game fix while PS3's are in their first shipment and being bid up to ridiculous prices on Ebay.

So no, three months down the road go get your PS3. Sell your Xbox 360 and all your gear on Ebay for at least 50% of the original purchase price.

So at the end of the day the math looks like this. You spend $800 on Xbox Stuff. You get $400 back. Then you spend $1000 on the PS3, accessories and games ($600 for system, $200 on accessories, $200 on games.)

In total, you have spent $1400 and gotten to play with two systems. Also as compared with the ludicrous $3000 Ebay PS3 price, you have saved $1600.

(Or, you could just not buy anything and wait until the price drops and the systems are available 3 months from now, you dummy.)