Posted on 11/18/2006 5:12:46 AM PST by Living Free in NH
A furious Mayor Thomas M. Menino vowed yesterday to bill Sony Corp. for the chaos that swirled around the release of its PlayStation 3 machine after Boston police had to quell crowds grown frenzied and unruly by the hype surrounding the coveted consoles.
“We had to rush in 12 police cars with officers there and take them off the streets of our city where they’re doing their patrols, to squelch the crowd that we had there,” Menino said, referring to a throng of 500 at Copley Place.
“It’s something that should not be tolerated,” he said. “It’s wrong to take advantage of the public that way, wrong by the manufacturer and by the retailer.”
Japan-based Sony made only 400,000 PlayStation 3’s available for the product’s launch, and thousands camped out for days at stores across the nation for a shot at shelling out $500-plus for the holiday must-have.
“The mayor feels this is a ploy by big business to fill the pockets of their stockholders on the public’s back without any regard for public safety,” said Menino’s spokeswoman, Dot Joyce.
Police had to control crowds at the Copley Plaza Mall’s Sony Style, where throngs rushed the doors at 5 a.m., and at the Fenway Best Buy, where more than 400 people were lined up by noon Thursday.
“It was ridiculous,” said Fernando Villanueva, 22, of the South End, who camped out in the rain starting Wednesday and paid $630 for a PS3. “We tried to keep it orderly by creating a list and having a roll call every half hour,” he said. “But the store said our list was meaningless; it’s going to be a mad rush, and whoever gets through the doors first gets one.”
Police eventually convinced Best Buy to honor the list. But elsewhere, mobs of customers stampeded into stores, injuring a man in Wisconsin and forcing authorities to close a Wal-Mart in California.
In Connecticut, two armed thugs tried to rob a line of people outside a Putnam Wal-Mart at 3 a.m. Michael Penkala of Webster refused to give up his money and was shot, police said. He was in stable condition yesterday at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester with non-life-threatening injuries, said Connecticut State Police Lt. J. Paul Vance.
Sony spokesman Dave Karraker said 400,000 PS3’s were all the company could produce for the launch. The chaos “is not something we planned or foresaw,” he said.
If Sony didn’t, nearly everyone else seemed to know that limited supplies and high demand were a formula for trouble.
“All this hype was created by some marketing ‘genius’ who didn’t think out the end game,” said Hub public relations guru George Regan. “When you have people waiting for hours, even days, in the rain, and someone gets hurt, all for the ‘privilege’ of paying $600 for some game, sooner or later, it’s going to backfire.”
Jeeze, Mr. Mayor, just exactly what is the policeman's job? So some cops had to get off regular patrol or out of the donut shop and do actual police work?
And where is the monetary loss? The cops were on duty, weren't they? Do they get paid more to actually do something?
"I cannot see waisting hours on end on an activity so unproductive as playing video games,"
No flame here. I used to do just that. It was an addiction of sorts. I cannot stress how much better my life got when I gave it up.
Sad.
Typical comments by a man who never owned his own business.
I've been telling my friends lately, "I love America... I HATE American culture!" And the masses continue to just tolerate the knuckle-draggers who are comfortable being defined as merely consumers to fork over their money.
I don't understand why the stores couldn't have used some sort of ticket system instead. They give tickets to the first 20 or so in line for each unit they have to sell and then tell the other people to go home.
I know I won't ever do this. The first versions of any new high end gaming system have bugs which eventually get worked out in later versions. The Xbox 360 was a prime example of this.
Personally I think the PS3 is overrated. The fact that it is more of a computer than a console doesn't help things either. People buy gaming consoles because they do not want to deal with the hassles of tweaking a gaming computer to work with a particular game. They also do not want the hassles of customizing or upgrading said systems either.
BTW, nice phrasing, mayor mumbles, have you been reading Marx lately?
Did Mumbles Menino expect anything different? Cabbage Patch kids caused normal grown women to do the same thing back in the early 80's.
Stupid people to stupid things. A lot of those stupid people live in Boston. What are you gonna do?
Sony in using the pre-release shortage to hype the product. This is good marketing from their point of view. They are tapping into the massive resource of people's stupidity for their own gain.
If we could find a way to run a powerplant on stupidity, Global Warming would be a thing of the past.
I cannot imagine paying more than $500 for one of these things. My kid has been whining for one. The answer is No. Absolutely, unequivocally No. He's knows I'm not kidding but he feels deprived because his spoiled friends are getting them.
I don't agree with interfering with the free market.
But I will admit, looking at the police presence on the lines, that I did think that Sony manufacturing so few units had to know there was going to be violence and the police would have to be present in some more populated cities.
And I thought, what do they care? They don't have to pay for the police. We do.
You know, someone ought to take that New Orleans Katrina Looter Guy pic, and change the load he is carrying from beer to a Playstation 3...
How many units must a company make before putting them on sale? If they chose to stock each store to the gills, wouldn't that cause an even greater stampede as everybody thought they could get one?
"I don't understand why the stores couldn't have used some sort of ticket system instead. They give tickets to the first 20 or so in line for each unit they have to sell and then tell the other people to go home"
Because thy are idoits! Thats exactly what they did here at Wal Mart and Target stores in Texas.
Because the company needs to get the kinks out of the games & get feedback on the product.
Exactly what you said. But the good mayor knows better than to blame the coveting consumer. When people are stampeded for the next iteration of "tickle me Elmo" it's entirely PBS' fault.
If I absolutely had to have one of those things, and the choice was buying one on eBay for $2000 or standing in line for three days, I would pay the money and get it on eBay. My time and comfort is worth more than $20 an hour. (Leaving aside, of course, that you would probably be buying a box of bricks on eBay)
Of course, I don't absolutely have to have one of these things, so I get to keep my money and still catch Michigan/Ohio State on TV!
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