Many customers have become so frustrated with the massive PS3 online service outage that they’ve gotten rid of the console altogether.
A DailyTech.com article quoted an “anonymous UK retailer” as claiming that within the first week of the Playstation Network being down, it wasn’t really a big deal.
“However, from the second week onwards we have seen an increase of over 200 percent on PS3 consoles being traded in, split almost 50/50 between those trading for cash and those taking a 360 instead.”
Multi-platform games that are available for the PS3 and Xbox 360 are undeniably favoring the latter platform. For example, before the whole PS3 online crisis, about 37% of the copies of FIFA 11 were being sold on PS3 compared to 49% for the 360. But by the end of April, only 21% of new copies were being purchased on the PS3.
As mentioned, when the Playstation Network was down for a week, there were some rumblings and a lot of minor frustration, but after two weeks of no online service, everyone started getting antsy. Now that we are passing three weeks of the PSN being completely crippled, we’re talking about serious damage.
Not only has this created a severe amount of anger from the millions of PS3 owners, the companies that rely on the console for their business to function are being slammed. Publishers are reeling from lost revenue, especially those that had PS3 game releases planned for the April-May period long before any of this happened.
Sony has said it plans to compensate users for the inconvenience, by way of a free trial membership to the premium Playstation Plus service as well as a handful of free downloadable content. Of course, the service has to get back online before any of that can happen.
