Business is booming for the Xbox market in wake of the Playstation Network security scandal with one UK retailer reporting a 200% rise in PS3 trade-ins since the outage which saw the Sony network pulled 3 weeks ago.
Microsoft are laughing, with high-street gaming swap-shops struggling to keep up with demand for the amount of Xbox 360 consoles being requested to replace the 3rd-gen Playstation and its flailing gaming network.
One retailer says “People are bringing in PS3s together with all their games and they don’t want money, they want an Xbox 360.”
Along with console sales themselves, the number of subscriptions to the Xbox Live network is suggested to have leapt up considerably in the last month. With Microsoft dropping updates to the dashboard including Avatar Kinect and better methods of subscription payment for its UK customers over the coming weeks, it looks like many have just lost it with Sony and are running to the safety bosom offered by their rival. Who’d have thought it?
Gamers jumping the fence to Team Microsoft must remember the dreaded “Red Ring of Death” which has affected many Xbox 360 users, also the Xbox Live network is no stranger to intrusion from hackers itself, with a number of attacks and high profile hits over recent years, it’s worth bearing in mind before presuming the grass is greener on the other side.
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