Squid of Man

Gamesindustry is reporting this morning that Sony is seriously considering slapping a "minimum deposit" condition on all PS3 pre-orders in the UK. Apparantly this will be in the form of a $370 (£150) deposit.

I expect consumer outrage.

But Sony may have a point. The swindling of 360's on eBay really tarnished that console's launch, creating not only negative sentiment from the consumer base but also unfairly punishing those willing to adopt a machine early.

Sony are obviously keen to avoid the same thing happening again (they got a taste of it with their own PSP launch), and so are asking consumers to put their money where their mouths are. And fair enough. There are not going to be enough of these things to go around at Christmas, so if you want one, you're going to need to cough up more than $10 to get your name on one.

While this may punish a few kids who just can't cough up that kind of money up-front, on the whole it's a positive step towards curbing the mad dash for eBay, where no doubt we'll be seeing PS3's selling for $3-4000 come December. The more consoles Sony can get into the hands of genuine customers the better.

Of course, the flip-side is that Sony may have just fucked over that very group of people. Scared off by such a pricey deposit, many may shirk from it altogether (since you can almost get an entire 360 on-the-spot for that kind of money), and it'll just play into the crook's hands come launch time, only worsening the situation.

I guess only time will tell. But regardless of whether or not it works, at least Sony are attempting to do something about a problem that's becoming increasingly acute for console launches.