PS3 trade-ins ‘up 200%’

Retail sources have for the first time indicated that PS3 console trade-ins have dramatically risen as the controversial PSN outage continues.

In the first week of downtime we did not really see any major change in sales or trades,” an unnamed store manager ‘at a major UK retailer’ told Edge.

However from the second week onwards we have seen an increase of over 200 per cent on PS3 consoles being traded in, split almost 50/50 between those trading for cash and those taking a 360 instead.”

Belgian indie retailer Gameswap added: "People are bringing in PS3s together with all their games and they don’t want money, they want an Xbox 360. In every case it is because of Black Ops and or Modern Warfare 2.

We’re just ten days into the month and already we have an increase of 200 per cent in PS3s coming into the store compared to all of March. Normally we sell them really fast, but not this time. We’ve only sold 30 to 40 per cent of our inventory right now.”

Another is said to have experienced a "massive increase" in such trade ins, adding that most of these customers had exchanged for Microsoft’s machine. There are also claims that an increasing number of pre-orders for upcoming titles have been switched from PS3 to Xbox 360.