Lasting damage
It's looking like the down-time that Sony's online services - PlayStation Network - continue to suffer from are hitting its PS3 console.
Self-conscious games mag Edge had been speaking to a few retailers who have reported a big jump in returns of the PS3, and even more worryingly for Sony, a lot of them are being traded in for Xboxes.
The PlayStation Network has been down since late April, and while there was no great effect in the first week, one retailer who preferred to remain anonymous said trade-ins had jumped to three times the normal level from the second week onwards, with half of those asking for an Xbox instead. Another retailer reckoned the rate was even higher, and that it was mainly hardcore FPS gamers suffering online gaming withdrawal symptoms.
The one retailer willing to go on the record told Edge: "At the end of each month people come to sell their consoles. People that need money [to pay bills]. What's different this time around is that that they are bringing in PS3s together with all their games and they don't want money, they want an Xbox 360. In every case it is because of Black Ops and or Modern Warfare 2.
"We're just ten days into the month and already we have an increase of 200 per cent in PS3s coming into the store compared to all of March. Normally we sell them really fast, but not this time. We've only sold 30 to 40 per cent of our inventory right now."
Sony still hasn't been able to give a date for the restoration of its online services. A blog update earlier this week said merely: "I know you all want to know exactly when the services will be restored. At this time, I can't give you an exact date, as it will likely be at least a few more days. We're terribly sorry for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience as we work through this process."
Even if there's a full restoration today, it looks like Sony will have lost a lot of its most hard-core gamers to Microsoft and suffered lasting damage to the PlayStation brand.