My PS3 Library continues to grow, system be darned!
It’s been a little while now since I last gave an update on my PS3 hunt, so for today I am going to share what I’ve been up to on it for the last couple of weeks. It’s a good sign for me that I should get a PS3, because even after two weeks, I haven’t changed my mind on wanting it. Then again, part of me now is wondering if the reason why I want to acquire one so badly is simply because I can’t find one.
Anyway, if you think it was as easy as just clicking a button online or driving to a store and grabbing one, you are sorely mistaken (although, I guess it could have been that simple if I stopped changing my mind). Read on to see the ups and downs I’ve been going through these last two weeks in order to actually attain this coveted console, and I haven’t even gotten it yet!
Saturday 2/27 & Sunday 2/28
It was Gamestop that got me interested in a PS3, with their current promotions of 60% bonus trade-in credit and $120 on my refurbished Xbox 360. I drove to my nearest Gamestop that weekend carrying my 360 in hand trying to attain a PS3. As many of you may recall, I had no such luck as they were sold out at every Gamestop in the entire DC area. If I could have taken advantage of these promotions at Gamestop, I would have had to probably pay $50 or so out of pocket (stupid tax!) after trading in one of my refurbished 360 consoles and 3 games. Definitely easy on the wallet. I went home from Gamestop dejected.
Monday 3/1
I ended up grudgingly ordering a PS3 Slim off the Amazon website after I couldn’t acquire the system at Gamestop, since Amazon had a 1 month estimated delivery date. With the Gamestop promotion ending on 3/15, I thought it would be a good idea if I was just got on the Amazon list, so if I couldn’t find a PS3 in a Gamestop by 3/15, at least I could just get one from Amazon later (and tell a little white lie to my wife that I found a Gamestop that had it in stock). No tax and free shipping meant $300 flat. All was well until two days after I placed the Amazon order that Amazon updated my order to inform me that my PS3 would be delivered Monday, March 8th. I still wanted to give myself a chance to find one at a local Gamestop, so I ended up canceling my PS3 order at Amazon.
Wednesday 3/3
After I canceled my Amazon order, I spoke to my brother and informed him of my plans to buy a PS3. He then told me his launch 360 red-ringed on him the other day. I volunteered to give him one of my three 360s – in fact, the one I was planning to trade in at Gamestop. Unfortunately, that meant that if I was holding onto this 360 for my brother, I could no longer trade it in towards a PS3. That also meant I didn’t have to buy it at Gamestop. That ultimately meant…I should not have canceled my Amazon order! If only he had brought that to my attention before I canceled my Amazon order…
Since then, Amazon has not had the PS3 in-stock, so I wandered to the Newegg site. When Amazon runs out of stock, they generally just show the next affiliated retailer that has the system stocked, but Newegg has a little button that says “Auto-Notify”. It can’t hurt, I told myself as I clicked the button and entered my email address.
Saturday 3/7
With my intent to buy a PS3 clear, I also knew I wanted to pick up a couple of games that I knew would be hard to find, as they were older PS3 releases: Valkyria Chronicles and Folklore. I drove around to a few Gamestops to acquire these exclusive PS3 titles, and at least came home successfully nabbing perhaps the last copy of each from the only stores in my area. The Gamestop clerk asked me if I wanted to pre-order any other PS3 games, but I told him I would think about it later if I could find a PS3 first. I was a little bit happier though when I got home that night, since I was able to find the games I wanted to buy. It actually makes me wonder if I actually enjoy buying games as much as I do playing them.
Monday 3/8
One week ago, I was working from home, so when I got the email at 12:21PM EST that the PS3 was in-stock, I hurried to the site and sure enough it was there. But Newegg was not giving free shipping on the product, and instead had a shipping cost of a little over $12. I thought, “Sure why not – I’ve been kicking myself for not getting the PS3 at Amazon.” I ordered it, and got the confirmation. A minute afterwards, I thought, “Wait, doesn’t Newegg usually participate in Bing Cashback? I could have gotten some money back on this $300 purchase!” Going to the Bing Cashback site, I did see that Bing was giving a 2% Cashback on Newegg purchases, and for $300, $6 would certainly reduce the $12 shipping cost. So I canceled my order at Newegg, went in and tried to buy the PS3 again. Unfortunately, it was sold out. The PS3 Slim was in stock at Newegg from 12:21PM EST to about 12:24PM EST. I canceled my order to try to save $6, and there went my hopes of getting a PS3. I grumbled and hit the button “Auto-notify” once again.
I was starting to get desperate. This was the second time that I had actually ordered a PS3 and canceled it, and now couldn’t have it. I did notice though that K-Mart was running a promotion last week: “Buy a PS3 and get God of War Collection Free”. I don’t remember the last time I went into K-Mart. Still, with such a good deal, I was thinking that maybe people don’t really go to K-Mart to buy PS3s, so I drove over to check. I was actually dumbfounded to see that the K-Mart near me stocked basically all of the newest games. It had 3 copies of the God of War Collection available, but unfortunately, no PS3s. The woman said to try calling the next morning, since they may get some in then.
Later that night after dinner, I came back upstairs and checked my email. Apparently Newegg had the PS3 in stock again at 6:21PM EST. But with just my luck, everyone in my entire area lost Internet that night courtesy of Comcast. By the time I was able to finally get online again, the PS3 was sold out once again at Newegg and hasn’t returned since.
Tuesday 3/9
When I woke up Tuesday, I tried to call K-Mart multiple times to see if they got a shipment of PS3s in. I was never able to get through to their electronics department as it seems like it was really poorly managed. I was frustrated. But then a deal arrives almost from the heavens itself: Dell ran a Dell Daily Deal and was selling the PS3 Slim 120GB for $269.99, and on top of that, God of War Collection for $19.99. The problem with buying from Dell though, is the sales tax. Fortunately, Dell had free shipping, and was participating in 10% Bing Cashback. I jumped on this deal. I was a little bit annoyed that when I jumped on it, the Cashback dropped from 10% to 5%, but still, after all the discounts and everything, I was able to order a PS3 Slim 120GB model with God of War Collection for $290 shipped to my house. The bad part? Estimated delivery date of March 26, 2010. I guess I won’t get a PS3 in time for my birthday after all.
Wednesday 3/10
“Should I go check to see if K-Mart has the PS3 Slim in stock?” “Should I cancel my Dell order?” “NOO STOP CANCELING YOUR ORDERS!!” I finally told myself. And surprisingly, Dell updates the estimated delivery date of my order for the PS3 and God of War Collection to Thursday, March 11, 2010. I read on the Slickdeals.net forum that several people got notification shipments of their PS3s from Dell, and then some even said they were already holding their PS3s in their hands. Even a couple people said Dell tried to deliver two PS3s to them (?!). Still, I didn’t quite care. All that meant was that I would be getting my PS3 the next day!!
Thursday 3/11
My wife decides to work from home on Thursday. Wait, what? So does that mean she will see when the PS3 gets delivered? Hopefully not, since she is still under the impression that I am not spending money on the PS3 because I’m trading stuff in at Gamestop. How will I explain the huge Dell box at our front door? Luckily, I don’t hear a peep from her all day on the subject, so maybe I can sneak it by her when I get home. As soon as I get home, what do I see? A package from Dell that is far too small to contain a PS3 in. The thing I feared ended up happening: Dell just shipped me the God of War Collection only and updated my order status to delivered. Well where the heck is my PS3? Now I have 4 PS3 games sitting on my shelf but I can’t even play them.
Friday 3/12
I call up Dell support to get an update on the status of my PS3. I had hopes that maybe it would get delivered the next day, since many people were all saying they got their PS3s from Dell. It was not to be for me. The customer service rep (amazingly fast time to get through to customer service at Dell compared to Blizzard, btw) told me that the PS3 is backordered, and they are waiting for more stock from Sony. The expected delivery date for my PS3 is now April 14th. Wait, so when I originally purchased it, the estimated delivery date was March 26th but you updated it to March 11th for some people and dropped mine all the way back to April 14th? Grr. You’re mistakenly sending other people two PS3s at a time and can’t even send me mine? All they could say was that the PS3s went out in the order they came in as, so deep down, I know I can’t blame anyone but myself for not ordering before they ran out of stock.
Today
Yeah so anyway, I’m kind of pissed about all of this right now. I almost want to cancel my Dell order, but with my luck, it’ll probably end up being ready to ship right after I cancel it. But seriously – I have to wait an entire month from now just to get it? And the cruelest part is, the new date Dell gave me was not even for the PS3 part of my order. I’m actually annoyed with the entire Dell order process right now. Why can’t you guys learn a thing or two from Amazon? What good is your delivery estimate, order updating, and shipment notification if none of them are correct in your system?! Gah. So yeah – the wait continues. I guess that means I will be able to spend more time with Final Fantasy XIII as well as ranking closer towards prestiging in Modern Warfare 2. But the PS3 continues to slip my grasp. Of course, probably by April, there will be PS3s available in every store so it’ll be just my luck that I went through all of this only to find them in abundant supply on store shelves when I get mine. C’est la vie.
Holy man. That’s a lot of cancelling and re-ordering woes. I had a crazy time trying to find my PS3 too. I got the 80 GB bundle that came with MGS4 and the first Dualshock 3 controller. A few months before it came out, my house was broken into and my PS2 and about 40 games were stolen (among other things). With the insurance money I convinced my wife that it was better for me to get a PS3 instead of replacing all those old games, but there were still a lot of PS2 games I hadn’t played and still wanted.
When I heard they were releasing the MGS4 bundle (which was the last to still have PS2 backwards compatibility), I decided to get it, but little did I know how hard it would be to find. I tried all the stores in my area (in Toronto), and when I finally found one who told me they had it and would hide it in the back room until I got there, the store clerk couldn’t find it and then realized the other clerk sold it!
The guy felt so bad that he called all the stores he knew and found a video store that had a small EB Games (Gamestop) booth in the store. He begged the guy to hold it for me for 15 minutes until I could get there. When I finally had my hands on the box and brought it to my car I got such a rush! I couldn’t believe the excitement of just buying it and taking it home! I’m glad I found that bundle because since then they’ve taken away PS2 compatibility, so it feels like I have a rare unit.
On a side note, a good place I’ve found to get games for cheap is Circuit City (The Source here in Canada). They seem to drop the prices a lot quicker than other stores. I recently got Resistance 2 for $35, Rock Band 2 for $25, and Rachet & Clank Tools of Destruction for $20. I always find it worthwhile to check out non-video game stores for deals. You never know what you’ll find because they may not be as tuned into what games are still hot, so they drop prices just to clear the shelves for new stuff!
i remember that MGS4 bundle! wasn’t it like $500? I think that price was too high for me then but I hear that backwards compatible PS3s still fetch a nice premium.
still, i think i played through most of the ps2 games i had wanted to play so i’m ok without the backwards compatibility.
in a way, i think it’s good that i don’t have the ps3 to a degree, so i can actually play through my current games without getting too distracted…but expect more entries on ps3 games in the future at some point!
I almost got that MGS4 bundle too. espion4ge, I think we’ve all been there. I once drove to 5 Gamestops to find a copy of Phoenix Wright 3. So rewarding at the end!
Ya, that bundle was $500. It was way before the price drop. I think all of the 80 GB PS3s were around that price at the time, so I figured it was a good deal. I had to get MGS4 anyway! Man, the reason I got into Playstation in the first place was from playing through the original demo for Metal Gear Solid 1. I remember the demo took you all the way through to rescuing the DARPA Chief, which I think was about an hour of playtime. After that I was sold. Its hard to top Metal Gear for me!
How far are you in FFXIII? No thoughts on your blog on it so far, even though I’ve seen you online playing it. I’m in the middle of the second disc so far.
i’m on the second disc too. i’ve started writing up thoughts on it already, and i should be able to post it for tomorrow!
I order a PS3 on the 9th around 1:30 PM, everybody that ordered one after seemed to have gotten theirs already while my order is still in the “In-Production” stage. My estimated delivery date is still March 26th. I did contact Dell through there online chat feature: http://slickdeals.net/forums/showpost.php?p=28173244&postcount=321
i have the gunmetal mgs ps3 haha. i bought it off this guy at work for a good deal since he was disappointed it didn’t offer backward compatability.
now i’m trying to decide b/w buying god of war 3 and uncharted