Why is GAME selling second-hand PS3s?

Yesterday I decided the only thing better than carrying heavy bags from Sainsbury's was buying the new Colin McRae game, DiRT, for my 360. As I browsed the shelves for some discounted bargains, I noticed to my surprise that the retailer GAME was selling pre-owned PlayStation 3s.

Seriously, do people care so little about this super-hyped console that they're selling it so soon after it's released!? For crying out loud, people still own original Mega Drives 17 years after it came out. (Did you know its CPU ran at 7MHz? Bless.)

GAME currently offers £200 cash for a PlayStation 3, or £250 if you're part-exchanging it for something else in the store. That means some people, somewhere, paid upwards of £400 for a console, then decided they're happy to trade it in for a £200 loss after a matter of months (perhaps to buy a new 360 and its way better games?).

I own a NES, a SNES, two PS1s, a PS2, an Xbox 360, my first gaming PC and my current gaming PC. Not once, in the whole history of my life as a gamer, have I ever been tempted to sell any one of these machines, even when they were worth a tidy sum of cash in a store or on eBay.

Could it be that the PS3 isn't selling as well as Sony hoped because everyone's just buying second-hand models? There's no chance I'm buying a PS3 until it hovers around the £320 mark. But I can't deny seeing an as-new model on sale for just over £300 was very tempting indeed.

Maybe I'll wait 'til I've completed Colin McRae, then we'll talk.