[QUOTE="shadowcat2576"]

As far as having overwhelming impact on the industry, I doubt it. I'm sure Nintendo is at least vaguely aware of how many Wiis are sold on Ebay. Stores put mechanisms in place to limit bulk purchases of these high demand items, usually limiting one purchase per household at a time.

HuusAsking

In addition, most don't care anyway. A friend of mine bought several Wii's from a lady at a local retailer simply by giving her twenty bucks. Not a bad deal. If you divide the 5 Wii's by that amount it's only a $4 addition to his per unit cost. At one point he even said he was talking to a manager about giving him a percentage of each unit sold if we would notify him when shipments were coming and hold them till he got there. I'm sure this isn't the only story like this as well.

I only do when i go to the restroom.

nevi

I'm glad I'm not the only one who does this.

You also claim the profiteering is capitalism, which it is not. Capitalism relys on the addition of more value than the sale price. Profiteering adds no value. In fact it takes away the value of convenience and product guarantees. Profiteering is strongarming the consumers by creating a false lack of supply.

effthat

You're a bit off. Capitalism is many things and one of them being placing a value on opportunity. Right now hedge funds are one of the biggest purchases of oil futures contracts at the moment and they have zero intent to ever take delivery of the oil they buy. In fact, that contract may flip several times before it's sold on the spot market and delivery is taken. Time, capital, and opportunity are all values in a capitalistic system. As such all are "invested" in the practice of speculating, flipping, etc.

I bought 4 PS3's when they came out. I kept one and sold the other three. Two for almost $2k. If some idiot parent thought their kid was worth $2k then more power to them. Didn't bother me in the slightest.

[QUOTE="SpruceCaboose"][QUOTE="Zhengi"]

[QUOTE="ramey70"]I think a lot of people are serioulsy discounting the forced bundles (which can incude up to 10 games in some cases) which are still going on to this day. Not to mention Wii Play sales.Zhengi

What about the Halo forced bundles? The MGS4 forced bundles? Should we count those if you don't want to count the Wii bundles? If people are willing to pay for it, then who is to say they are wrong?

Halo and MGS are not forced bundles. Now you are being irrational. I can buy the 360 or PS3 without those games, very easily at any retailer.

You can buy Wiis without the bundles as well. No one is holding a gun to anyone's head and forcing them to buy the Wii with all those games. I don't understand that logic either. If they don't want the Wii with those games, they can always wait.

Apples and oranges. You don't have to wait for a 360 or PS3 if a bundle is offered. You can simply select one of the stand alone systems and make your purchase. I bought my Wii in a 7 game bundle and wanted NONE of the games.

yeah yeah, I KNOW I can install a bigger drive and will obviously HAVE to but do the majority of users (ie non technical) know how to swap it out or will they just put up with the limitations of the 40gb model?

dz8t2t

Considering the actual owner's manual for the PS3 illustrates the procedure I'm sure it won't be difficult for anyone.

I'll wait for this:

SER69

You'll be waiting a very long time.

[QUOTE="ramey70"]

[QUOTE="hoola"]I don't care if Blu-ray Tanks....the whole HD thing is just stupid. The difference between HD movies on a HD-TV and normal DVDs on a Normal TV is basically nothing...Ateast to me. Its just a fad and is nothing but hype... It offers no REAL benefits over DVDs and can sometimes cost more. phatrawk

Riiiiiiiight.

Actually, what his opinion seems to be the popular one at the moment. BluRay is definitely the format of the (near) future...but this isn't DVD vs VHS. There was actually an interesting article in IEEE Spectrum (look up IEEE if you don't know what it is, and university-goers will probably have access to the magazine) a few months back saying that BluRay is a hollow victory. I'm happy that a single format won, and I'm happy it was BluRay...but I'm not running out to throw $$$ at high def just because companies want me to.

Actually it doesn't. Bluray and HD aren't one in the same. Sales of HD sets are skyrocketing, especially flat panels. Networks and satellite providers are scrambling to add more and more HD programming and content to satisfy demand. On a personal basis, I just purchased a 1080i HD camera for $3,700 to give my customers a choice for HD content. The response has been overwhelming. I can post pics of the cam if you don't believe me. HD is real, and it's here to stay. People see the difference.