Xbox Conspiracy … Or is there just a glut of inventory that must be moved?

Posted on July 28, 2002

Rant by Tiptonium

Early last week I was having my vehicle inspected at a local service shop. While I waited I decided to drop by the local Electronics Boutique store since EA’s NCAA Football 2003 was shipping to stores. When I got to the store, there were a few customers waiting impatiently for the overnight shipment to arrive with EA’s latest football game. I had not been by the store in a few weeks so I decided to browse for the latest release or bargain.

To my utter dismay the sales associates were seriously hawking the Xbox system as the system of choice. Now there were four PS2 owners in the store and each were wanting to pick up NCAA Football 2003 for their PS2. Each associate attempted to convince the PS2 owners to trade in their PS2 ($125 trade-in) and get the Xbox or trade in 6 PS2 titles and get $100 trade value towards an Xbox.

It got even worse. Each associate proclaimed that the Xbox is the system for sports fans. They went on to explain that the PS2 did not have the power nor the graphical requirements to do sports games and that ONLY the Xbox could handle this year’s sports games.

Me, I stepped in to explain what total bunk all of this was. That there was little difference when comparing the Xbox, PS2 and Gamecube offerings from EA. Sure the Xbox has that convenient disk drive for storage, but the PS2’s Meg cart is no slouch. I could not defend the ‘Cube’s storage medium as I personally feel that the low storage capacity is too small for sports titles. They tend to gobble up one (or more storage cards). One employee shrugged me off as an Xbox fanboy. The pitch continued…

One PS2 owner complained that the Xbox controller was too big. The employee then explained that he could use the PS2 controller in conjunction with a converter box or he could buy one of the new Xbox controllers that are indeed smaller. To my dismay he bought the line and decided to go home to get his “old” PS2 and trade it all for an XBOX system.

Then another PS2 owner decided to go with the XBOX. He only had 2 games for the PS2. The original Madden and a basketball title. Off he went to get his PS2.

Four PS2 owners left with NCAA Football 2003 for their PS2. Guess what? The store only received four copies of the PS2 version. They had well over 48 copies of the game for the Xbox and Gamecube. What is going on here?

Me, I picked up the Xbox version.