JazGalaxy

I could honestly see that happening. I feel like there might be SOME demand around day 1 for both consoles from people who want it NOW, but I don't think there will be any extended demand. ESPECIALLY if Sony continues to refill the supply chain going towards christmas.

I hate console flippers as much as everyone else, but I feel like your situation is different. You're not flipping it so much as you are exporting it, which is to some extent a legitimate business. If anyone in the states expected to buy a Japanse console 10-20 years ago, they would expect to pay about twice what the console would go for locally. The same with games.

So... do what you feel comfortable with.

I also forgot to mention that the ability to flip consoles at the 360/ps3 launch was mitigated by stores getting into the act. They forced people to purchase "bundles" that sometimes included 1,2 or even 3 junk games alongside accessories nobody wanted.

The lack of bundling right now combined with the number of preorders sitting around stores like WalMart well into October would suggest that there isn't going to be a short supply like there has been in years past.

Here's what I think:

Consoles are only released every once in a blue moon, so there's not a lot of precedent to divine trends and whatnot.

The NES and Genesis came out to little fanfare at all, especially with NES rolling out slowly across the country. (those were darker times). The SNES was a big ticket item, but people found them with little trouble. The Saturn had their bizarre suprise launch (one of the most amazing stories in gaming) and so people were caught flat footed, but could find one anywhere they wanted. The playstation was an unknown and the underdog to the N64. People could find one anywhere on launch day.

Now, the N64 was the first console I recall having limited availability. It's limited availability was due to it being one of the hot toys for kids that christmas. Parents had to look around for one, but it could be found easily enough.

The playstaiton 2 was the first console to reach fever pitch when it came to getting one on lauch day. It was a zoo. It was a perfect storm of factors that led to it being in high demand and short supply. Some of it was Ken Kutaragi's obscene hype. Part of it was the aging fan base who suddenly had a lot of money. Part of it was the burgeoning internet which allowed more hype to be built around it. Part of it was the unit doubling as a cheap, subsidized dvd player, (the console had the worst game attach rate of any console, but a ridiculously high DVD attach rate. Especially with The Matrix.) But mostly it was due to a dramatic scarcity on the part of Sony due to poor manufacturing yields. In short, the narrative was "this thing is going to be big, and there are only going to be a few". That bought about the first instances of "flipping consoles", It was the dot com bubble and ebay was new and newly famous. Stories of people paying multiple times what the console was worth became common.

The next console launch, xbox and then PS3, saw people standing in line and trying to get day one consoles BECAUSE OF THE PLAYSTATION SITUATION. Few people if anybody profited the way the playstation flippers did. Instead of making hudnreds or thousands of dollars on flipping units, they made maybe 100 bucks.

Even the wii, which was the cloest thing to PS2 hype we've seen, was sold for only a few dollars over the cost of a new unit. I think I payed 50 dollars over cost for mine, to get it day one.

So... in summary, I absolutely do not expect anyone to make any money flipping consoles this generation.

1) They're not a big toy item this christmas.

2) There's not a lot about them that people actually want to play.

3) Wii U has the software this holiday and is significantly cheaper.

4)All 3 publishers are pushing good hardware at the same time, which means there is more aggregate supply than there has ever been for a console launch.

5)We live in an age where people are just as likely to want iPads and the like for christmas as they are consoles.

All the "flipping consoles" business is due to the Playstation 2 and that was a phenomenon that we are not likely to see ever again.

I don't think that was really what he was going for. I agree that he wasn't articulating his thoughts very well in that podcast, but I think had a lot to do with the people who were in the room with him at the time. The guy who was arguing against him was Jeff Mattas who, honestly in my opinion, was making an arguement that was kind of ridiculous. His basic position was that all the flaws in GTAV were because Rockstar are artists and they were expressing themselves in some intellectual master-stroke, when, in reality... the game just has problems.

I think Cannata was trying to argue that for selling as many copies at GTA did, and for the attention it was getting at the time for being an avant garde masterpiece, it was actually bereft of any real substance. I tend t agree with him in that regard. The setup for the game was fantastic. An old retired criminal who is out of the game meets an up and coming criminal who becomes the son he never had. All the while they are joined by a ticking timb-bomb of a best friend who is stumbling toward a secret that could put them all against eachother? IT's a perfect set up. But the game doesn't do anything with it. After it sets up the plot, it meanders and stalls right up until the final missions, even when ti makes NO sense that the characters aren't engaging the central conflicts and questions of the plot. People were making inane psuedo-intellectual observations like "Trevor is genius because you finally get to actually play a character who behaves the way GTA players behave!," but in reality that is pure coincidnece as illustrated by the fact that there are two other player characters commit the same atrocities, yet do not have matching personalities. It's simply reading into what's not there in order to make superficial content seem deep.

So, in that way, I agreed with the frustrations Jeff was having.

I agree to some extent.

I think a lot of the annoying conversation has to do with there not being a lot of games to talk about at the tail end of the generation. But, I also think it has to do with gaming journalists desire to overly analyze things that aren't worthy of that amount of analysis. This is one of the things that bothers me about Patrick. Instead of accepting on face value, the fact that people play different games for different reasons, they try to analyze why games "don't work", when in reality they just mean "I don't like it". I always feel like Jeff is pretty up front with the fact that his experience is his experience, though. He tends not to make blanket statements about games in general and localized it to his experience.

Something tells me that if Capcom was going to do something F2P, it wouldn't be Street Fighter. It would be something more like that Capcom Fighting All Stars or whatever. Something where they could leverage more than just SF.

The prospect of people shelling out money for the same game they already own with a couple more scanlines is a concept my brain doesn't wrap around. Evo wants it? What is that, like 100 copies?

In other news, I think the prospect of it being that legacy content is much more likely seeing as how the commercial seemed to reference multiple generations of Street Fighter titles.

Notice how that quotes said there were only {S3 and 360 versions "right now"). That "right now" would likely last right up until it's announced for PS4 this week.

Oh yeah, totally. I think even Blizzard would agree with him now.

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I can't imagine what you mean by that. This is my actual opinion. I've been following the guys career for like 5 years. One doesn't do that when they don't legitimately like someone's work.

And moreso than that, the "high school bully" thing is legitimately why I can't listen to most gaming podcast. I can't tell you how many podcasts I've listened to where scrungy, overweight, half balding men in their mid thirties spend every other sentence threatening eachother, game developers, and somehow videogames themselves with physical violence. Picture Ryan's Sonic The Hedgehog rant, except done by someone who isn't funny and has 1/10 the charisma Ryan has.