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.”
o.....m......g
I just looked and these things are going for $2200 on eBay. I can see camping out in line for a day to make $1800 or so.
I agree. Congress should launch an investigation. But I think they should wait until they can get the steroids-in-baseball investigation completed.
Some guru, what or who is Hub?
People have been shot over these things. Why hype the h--- out of it then, if it is just a trial balloon? Do they not test these things before they market them? (Of course,the companies do not really have to hype them, the gamer magazines and websites will do that for them.) Although, I do understand that there is no better test and source of feedback than the millions of kid s who live and breathe for these devices, which is of course reltively better than being out shooting and robbing people.
Because the stores love the 'buzz' and the local media is only all to willing to play up such silliness. It makes for easy reporting. No research, no investigation; just point a couple of cameras at the crowd and give an interview or two.
LOLOL.....you just knew they were not about to blame the miscreants.
We're about to get annihilated by militant Islamists, and they're worried about a Sony Playstation. I'll retire to Bedlam.
"Congress should launch an investigation."
I do not know why you would think of such a thing. But I do enjoy a little bit of sarcasm as weel as the next guy.
Incidentally, a bunch of my friends, pipefitters, worked on completely refitting a refinery about 30 miles from me. The refinery was shut down almost immediately after the project was finished. Shortly after that was when I heard that the price of gasoline was going up because of a shortage in refining capacity.
The leftist belief that business is evil, is not countered by saying that business is incapable of evil. Big business and government share a very large and very comfortable (for them) boat.
I do not wish to imply that you were thinking any of the above, but these are just my thoughts.
I'd rather be governed by the Sony board of directors than by the 'Rats of Boston.
Hey Mayor, get better citizens.
...or rather our primitive HARD drive....heh,heh..
What a bunch of useless folks...the mayor sounds like he doesn't
understand modern people...and the people waiting in line...what a bunch of
well, I don't know what to say...it's good to know people have such enviable
priorities that they will camp out for a game machine...
bunch of pre-matrix drones...
In a year or two, somebody will come up with another
uber-box, and all the PS3 peons will riot again....
get a "real" life (even if it sucks, at least it's real)
Don't equate the "windows" computer paradigm with what
a computer should be like.....
The PS3 is supposed to be a complete system....we'll
find out when everyone has had enough time to use one
long enough...expect some probs...
One of the funniest(or saddest) pieces of video I ever saw was where there was a rush of buyer towards the Cabbage Patch display. And there was a guy on a ladder just throwing the Cabbage Patch dolls into the surging crowd, and the crowd was scrambling after those dolls, like the Zombies in "Night of the Living Dead" scrambling for intestines.
You don't want to make tooo many units....if the
product is a flop you got lots of devices wasting money
in the warehouses...better to be able to ramp up
production immediately...if the product succeeds...
suppose the product has flaws? you gotta fix em, who
wants to fix 2 million unsellable products??
This "NEED" for a freakin' TOY surely must make Americans look nuts to the rest of the world.
I agree that computers are a better gaming platform than consoles (I do not own a console). As for upgrading, the main problem with that is that unless you do it very often, that new video card you might want to get may not work with your motherboard (e.g., AGP vs. PCIX), so you end up getting a new motherboard, which may require a new CPU and memory... I am sure you are familiar with this very expensive "vicious cycle."
Most console buyers do not want to deal with that. They just want to put the game in the machine and play it. Once you introduce the upgrading paradigm to the console world, you will end up with 2 possible outcomes:
Either scenario sounds like it will be a bad outcome. A competing console maker could focus on one version of their console and then capitalize on the fact that it will play all of the games for that platform.
True, but it is also illegal to incite a riot. A large group of angry people can easily overwhelm a few police officers. I hate to say that "there ought to be a law" to handle this sort of thing but stores should be held partially responsible when they incite these sorts of things.
Game consoles are sold at cost and the manufacturer makes their profit on the sale of games, which have a large profit margin. The reason Sony limited the production of consoles is to manage their cash flow, they don't make any money on them. Soon some Linux hackers will install Linux on these consoles because it's a cheap way to buy a high powered computer for a fraction of the cost of a similar PC.
Ha! We ARE nuts! But hey,.we are Americans!
Nuts and Free in the best country in the world!ha.
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