Rumor: Best Buy offering new PS3 buyers a free game to discourage Slim trade-ins

Give it a rest, Ordeith.

There are very few multiplatform games with noticable differences anymore. You are even seeing the majority of EA games look slightly better (again hardly noticable) on PS3 because it's the lead development platform.

There are a number of titles in recent H2H comparison videos that point to the PS3 version as superior all things considered. You also have 360 games coming out as superior as well on some. It's not a prevelant issue like it was in 2007. In fact, you will generally have to search long and hard to even find the differences. In screen shots it's a little different because they allow closer scrutiny but while the games are in motion you won't enjoy one or the other less or more.

It's usually going to hedge on which platform was the lead in development and which was a shoddy port. If a company puts adequate resources behind both versions then they will both look fantastic.

The answer to the question is that NO it's not basically true all multiplatforms look better on the 360. That statement had a kernel of truth in 2007 but not in this day and age.

PS3fanboy#5:

As in Mr. Grant's post above yours Batman joins the long list of Multiplatform games that look and run better on the 360.

While the PS3 might give a slight edge to Burnout, everything else (Ghostbusters, Fallout, GTA, etc) runs better on the 360.

I am sorry that upsets you.

yeah there really is no way out of it. People just have to accept the fact that they can't have everything...unless you are willing to pay for it.

plus be happy if you got a 80gb with a free game. you know for a fact that that 80gb system is pretty reliable. The same can't be said about the slim 120gb systems...hopefully they are reliable but we won't know for a few years.

Oddly enough the three titles are all first party Sony games. Maybe Best Buy and Sony have some sort of incentive agreement in place to offer the first party titles. From a consumer point of view it still makes more sense to just get the Slim and then you have an extra $100 to buy whatever game you want and some coin left over. If anything Best Buy should be incetivizing with a game and an additional accessory to make the value of keeping the older more expensive PS3 greater than the value of returning it - $100.

Even more strange is that Best Buy has a store policy that if they reduce the price of an item you purchase within 30 days you can bring in your receipt and get the difference refunded in cash.

In theory you can keep your old ps3, get $100 back and the game they are offering unless it's one or the other. It's also possible their policy on price matching themselves has changed. I still remember buy a Motorola headset for my niece on her birthday ... i think it was around $65 ... then a week later they had a big sale and the cost of the headset was in the neighborhood of $30 ... I simply took in my reciept and my item and got the difference in cash.

I just don't understand the purpose of offering the game as compensation when the fat prices have reduced to the same as the new slims. Either way you get $100. .. maybe they are giving the option of getting a game instead? As I said thats even more dumb because you could have bought any game you like with the savings from a return.

I forgot about Best Buy's price matching.

Now that I think about it that would be the best alternative. Just give customers a price match and they can keep the big ps3. That'll keep stock gone, and if possible, offer them a discount coupon for anything else as thanks for not returning the big PS3.

It's possible that the best reason they are offering a game is to trick some consumers into thinking they are benefiting from the deal.

"Please don't return the PS3, have a Sony game, on the house." Many people would just be happy with that.

Amen.

Call your store. They will tell you what to do.

thanks. I just got back from said store with $100 and infamous. Today is my lucky day.

It makes perfect sense in that case. You get the $100 AND a game ... not one or the other. I guess they want to keep the Slim as inventory and not the older models which will seemingly have a harder time selling with the new unit available.

I would have done the same thing ... get the $100 and the game.

Makes perfect sense now.

My thoughts exactly, but I'm not sure I'm surprised seeing Joystiq SOMEHOW finding a way to try and make Sony look bad for releasing a brilliant, smaller, more efficient and cheaper console. How I pine for PS3Fanboy.

Why not lay some blame on Best Buy and other retailers, who have know for the past 7 days AT LEAST that the slim was coming, but continued to sell Phats? Sony DID intentionally dry up supplies in the weeks and months leading up to the announcement... they didn't HAVE to do this, and it would have cost them money to not be selling phats during that time, but they did anyway. If anything you should be praising the efforts Sony have made to reduce any backlash from recent Phat consumers.

For shame JC Fletcher, are you that attached to your beloved Microsoft that you have to stoop to this kind of low grade 'journalism'? Reminds me of this: http://www.smgamers.com/?p=948

A sale to Sony is a sale to Best Buy, not a sell-through to the customer. This won't enter into any figures Sony gives.

Even if it did count as a another sale it's irrelevant because there was a return before the sale. As the other two have intimated console manufacturers count sold as in how many go to retailers not how many sell through at the register.

Either way it won't make a difference. Thats like I saying I could buy and return the same videogame 1 million times and the company who makes the game would appear to have sold 999,999 copies more than they actually did. That logic doesn't make any sense because a return occured.

Stop being such a drama queen.

I agree 100%. This looses an extra $35 or so in value for the consumer because the value between the cost of a game and the difference in price is greater than the cost of said game. In fact, the consumer is losing about 33% the difference in price. So, why not just return the system and get the $100, buy any game you want (not just from 3) and still have money left over?

The only way this works for Best Buy is if they offer slightly more than $100 in value. Maybe one of the games mentioned, PSN card(s), controller, eye toy, intercooler, messenger pad, PS3 official headset or some combination therein to go a little above $100 in MSRP. Otherwise, you would have to be a fool. Even if you didn't want the Slim Best Buy still allows the consumer price matching on it's own items within 30 days. In theory, you could keep the fat PS3 and get $100 in the payment you used (cash, gift card, credit etc) back anyway because of their policy.

This move seems desperate and non-sensical unless they are giving $100 + the game.