PS3 pre order strategy | click here for PS3 slim preorders

1. Place a Pre Order
As you're reading this guide on our pre order site I'm assuming you've already figured this one out for yourself. However I will reiterate this as it's very important. Past experience has shown that the only way to get a new console anywhere near the release date is to place a pre order as soon as retailers start accepting them. The longer you leave it the longer the pre order queue will get.

2. Do your research (or let us do it for you)
Just because a retailer is willing to take your pre order it doesn't mean that they can fulfill that pre order on the release date. GAME took thousands of pre orders for the Xbox 360 and in January of 2006 they still had over 7,000 outstanding pre orders to fulfill! Beware of retailers that are taking too many pre orders, the chances are Sony will not be able to supply them with enough PS3 consoles to meet demands.

Where possible we will try to give an honest evaluation of each retailer based on our past experience of running a stock locator site for the Xbox 360. Some retailers did really badly last time and made a very bad name for themselves.

If you take Amazon as an example they upset a lot of customers when the Xbox 360 was released; they took thousands of pre orders that they couldn't fulfill and to rub salt into the wounds they failed to manage their pre order queue properly. In some cases people placing orders in January 2006 were getting their consoles delivered before the people that ordered in 2005!

Despite all this Amazon could be a good bet this time. They can't afford to get this wrong twice, as a repeat of the Xbox 360 fiasco would be disastrous for them. We also think that a lot of people will be avoiding Amazon like the plague and placing their PS3 pre order somewhere else, this can only increase your chances of success with Amazon in getting that shiny new PS3 console.

3. Hedge your bets
When the Xbox 360 was launched back in December of 2005 there were a lot of disappointed people around. I'm not just talking about the people who thought they could simply place an order a few weeks before xmas and get a console for xmas day. There were thousands of savvy people who did the right thing and placed pre orders with big name retailers only to find that the retailer could not fulfill these orders in a reasonable time. There's absolutely no reason why you shouldn't place 5 or 6 pre orders with different retailers. The more preorders you place, the more chance you have of getting to the front of the queue.

If you order online, none of these retailers will require a deposit and your card will not be charged until the console is despatched. All you have to do is wait until the first console arrives and simply cancel all of your other pre orders. But before you do that, you might want to ask yourself, do you really want to cancel all of those pre orders?

Update: There's a rumour that Sony will be forcing retailers to take £150 deposit for each console. If this happens we still think it's worth placing 2 or 3 orders if your credit card can take it.

4. What to do if you're too successful
There is an alternative to cancelling your unwanted pre orders. You could simply wait for these consoles to arrive and sell them to your freinds and family. There will be a huge demand for the PS3 when it's finally released and there should be no end of people willing to bite your hand off for one of these consoles. You could certainly be popular for a while.

I'm sure everyone who looked at buying an Xbox 360 around xmas of 2005 is fully aware of how much these consoles were selling for on a certain auction site. On the day of release and a few days before xmas, prices spiked up to over £1,000 per console. In fact people were still making big profits into February of 2006. At worst people were covering the cost of their own console and a few games, at best they were making massive profits. Now we're not going to comment on the ethics of doing this, but whatever you decide to do with your unwanted PS3 pre orders, you can guarantee that there will be the same pre xmas auction frenzy and this could last well into 2007. This is just the reality of supply and demand.