Year of the Sony?

I was successful in modding my own XBOX 360 last week as previously reported.  Since then, I’ve modded my friend’s 360 and will do doing another friend’s later this week.  I’m wondering if I can’t make something of this.

 

I’ve always liked to tinker but no necessarily modding.  This is my first try at doing it and it has gone smoothly. 

 

After the initial mod, I’ve also done my PSP, however, the Wii was a tough one.  The soldering that needed to be done was a bit out of my league, which means getting a professional to do it for me.  Luckily I had met a fellow gamer during my technology school days that knew how to solder extremely well (like a machine it’s so perfect) so I commissioned him to do it for me.  Now the problem I face is the only truly unmodified console I have is the PS3.

 

In the past few years, PS3 has been slow to start and was steady at #3 in the current console race.  There were no AAA titles that had to be played, and those that were good either wasn’t great enough or was of second rate mascots, when compared to the behemoth of Nintendo’s roster.  But if the PS3 holds true and Sony doesn’t let the recent Blu-Ray win get to their heads, I believe this could truly be the year of the PS3.

 

Another thing that’s been brewing on the horizon is a certain electronics boutique store is having trade in promotions.  Those of you in the know will get the reference.  Trade in a certain amount of games and you get a free Nintendo DS or PSP or a pre-order towards a game.  Now usually when these promos pop up, I capitalize on a few pre-orders or a few new releases for cheap.  But with my recent modding craze, I found myself with a lot of games on multiple systems that I no longer needed to have.  So I purchased a few DS and sold them at a discount online.  This act of buying to sell for some people is almost evil in certain people’s eyes but I believe otherwise.  There was rumour of someone purchases large amounts en masse to sell or trade but in general, I’m speaking of small quantities. 

 

Nintendo DS, PSP, and the Wii are fairly hot commodities and for someone to actually benefit from selling these, enough to justify mass hoarding, is rare.  Let’s do a calculation:  If you were to trade in for example 5 games in order to gain one Nintendo DS, that would cost you roughly $40 plus tax and gas.  If most people are working at $15/hour and gas costs $1/L, that’s a cost of $60 in time and money just to obtain that DS.  This is not even taking into the time you spend listing said item, packaging it, and mailing it.  In the end, it really nets you about a 20-30% profit.  So what we are talking about here is scales of economy.  20-30% profit is huge when you are talking about selling a car.  20-30% profit on a gaming console isn’t so much.  So why do I do it?  I do for the benefit of those that are unable to obtain these items at a reasonable cost or simply do not have the time to search.  My cousin in Toronto has wanted a Wii and DS for the longest time but every time she looks at a Toys R Us or Futureshop, they are sold out.  So I get her one, sell it to her below retail and she’s extremely happy. 

 

Commodities brokering is what this is about.  Those that obtain commodities for others that are unable to obtain it themselves. The only difference is we are talking about electronic toys instead of barley.