The PS3 Release Done Right

No, I’m not talking about Friday’s US launch.


By anybody’s standard, the Japanese PS3 launch was a total abortion. Japan had the massive scenes at Yurakucho Bic, Yodobashi Akiba and many other locations. Rigged lotto sales, no crowd control, little to no information given to those waiting to buy the system…

Screwed up all around.

The US launch was even worse. A knifing, a shooting, shotgun holdups – and back in VA (where I used to live, work & play)

350 dumbasses tried to compete for 8 goddamned PS3s.

If a shop has 8 of any item, and you show up when there are more than 10-15 people there – what the hell makes you think you’re going to get one? And if you’re #300 showing up for said item?

Just fucking kill yourself.

Please. You are too stupid to be allowed to live.



But I don’t want to write about stupid people today. Everybody knows about them, and the news has been full of them all weekend.

Let’s talk about the smart ones. They don’t get nearly enough press.

Yesterday saw the second round of PS3 systems hitting Japan and things were far, far different from a week ago. I know I wrote last weekend about how I didn’t want one – and I still don’t.

I do want more money, though.

Believe it or not, I’m not out to take advantage of the PS3’s scarcity. No, I’m out to take advantage of Sony’s “global” launch fuck-up by selling a PS3 to somebody in Europe. For whatever reason, Sony continues to treat the European gaming market like some sort of bastard stepchild. The PSP didn’t hit the EU until 10 months after it hit Japan, and 6 months after the US got it. Things aren’t much different with the PS3. Japan and the US are getting it in November and the EU has wait until March.

If they even get it then.

One of the people who bought a PSP from me (via Ebay) has been asking me since last December about the odds of scoring him a PS3. (Granted, last December the PS3 was still “on track” for a global launch in April.) So many people are trying to cash in on the PS3 that I had no real interest in doing the Ebay thing this time around. There will be too many scam auctions, too many false bids and way, way too many non-paying “winners.” So while I wasn’t interested in the PS3 for Ebay purposes, but a single, direct sale might not be a bad deal.

So off I went.

I set out really early Saturday morning (too early, I’d later find out) to find the best place to try and score a PS3 for this guy in the UK. I left home about 4:30 on my bike (another mistake, I’d later learn) with Ueno as my first destination. Swinging by Yodobashi I saw that nobody was lining up there. I cruised to the local Don Quixote to see if maybe they’d gotten any more systems in. (How cool would that have been? To score a system at 4:30 and go right home and back to bed. ^.^)

They didn’t, so it was off to Akihabara.

Once I got there I was greeted with a sight far different from what was shown all over the internet last weekend. No big lines. No massive crowds. No homeless people linesitting. So what did I see?

Gamers.

Nice, orderly lines had formed up at 3 shops – two Sofmap locations and Aso Bit City. But what about Yodobashi Akiba, site of one of last weekends most massive crowds? Not a single person. Just a lone security guard pacing around outside.

The contrast was amazing.

Okay, so this wasn’t the big launch weekend – but so what? There were going to be 30,000 more systems hitting shops this weekend, which is about 1/3 as many as were out last weekend. But with fewer systems to go around, why weren’t people fighting for places in line?

A few reasons.

1 – The auction market was dead. Systems on Yahoo Auctions were only selling for about Â¥70,000, which is only Â¥10,000 more than retail. $85 profit isn’t worth a mid-November campout.

2 – Nothing worth playing. Seriously, a week later and the PS3 games’ list was up to 6 titles, since a mahjong game had been added to the lineup. The next gaming coming out? Another mahjong game! Whee….

3 – Information! One of the biggest problems with the launch (in both countries) was a total lack of information. How many systems (and of which models) would each store have? What time would they go on sale? Where should the line form? What will the sales procedures be?

#3 is the one I want to address.

Not giving customers (even potential ones) necessary information is just stupid. Why let a crowd form when you know you have no way of meeting demand? Let them know you can only serve a limited number of them and let the rest head elsewhere in their search. For the ones who will be able to get the product, let those people know what the procedure/timeline is going to be. From what I’ve seen, most every store got this wrong.

One week later, things started going right.

I joined the line at Aso Bit City just past 5AM, and was happy to see this sign on the front of the shop:

Granted, I can’t read all of it (or even most of it), but it’s pretty obvious how many of each system they’ll have, and where the shop would like the line to form. People came up, read the sign, and formed a polite line.

Even across the street at Sofmap (who may have had a sign – I didn’t venture over to check their deal out) the same thing was happening.

Just how polite were people being? Suppose somebody wanted to go get a drink from a vending machine, or maybe go find a restroom. What would become of their place in line?

Some folks came prepared:

This should show you just how much nicer it is to be in Japan than in the US. I can’t imagine a sign like that staying in place for more than two seconds were it in a US line. “Move your feet, lose your seat” would be the order of the day there. (Playground rules and all that.)

But here, people respected the improvised placeholders. I guess people saw them and said, “hmm, guess somebody beat me here. I’ll just queue up behind their spot then.” No fuss, no muss.

And people weren’t coming out of the woodwork to line up either. I probably could’ve shown up around 7AM and been only 30th in line. And it would’ve meant sleeping in later, taking the train instead of biking and avoiding the coldest part of the morning. Still, it was nice to know my spot guaranteed me the system I was after, and it gave me some time to level up my characters in Final Fantasy 3 (on DS).

Around 8:30 the shop staff arrived and clued everybody in to the system for the 9:00 opening. They passed out numbered tickets for both flavors of PS3 (I went with 60GB, of course) and told everybody not to leave the line anymore. When the magic time arrived, the line moved inside and purchases were made. They already had all the systems in bags (because you know they were going to sell every last one of them) and it was just a matter of tossing in whatever games and/or accessories people wanted.

I don’t care much for ABC’s point card (they only give 1%), but I have to hand it to them for their planning and efficiency. I also scored my DS Lite from them back in April and things were just as smooth then. Their organization makes the shopping/camping experience so pleasant that’s it worth the lack of points to know there won’t be some sort of screwup that’d send people home unhappy.

Why can’t more shops take the time to do things this well?