Homeless and Chinese Nationals Paid to Queue for PS3

This morning, following on from the PS3 launch craziness that SPOnG’s man in Tokyo told you all about on Saturday, there has been a spate of all-too-predictable ‘Shock! Horror!’ news stories. Right up there are those relating to various unscrupulous individuals (and, in some cases, shop owners) making a quick few hundred thousand Yen by selling on the most desirable consumer tech on earth right now.

Perhaps the most saddening news over the weekend was that certain Japanese ‘business people’ were paying local homeless people as well as Chinese nationals to queue for PlayStation 3s.

These are then being sold on auction sites at massively inflated prices: as we put this live, PS3s are currently changing hands on eBay for anything up to £1,200 (¥270,000).

SPOnG’s man in Tokyo told us yesterday that, “Yes, there were a lot of homeless people and Chinese people in the queues – it seems that certain wealthier business types didn’t mind paying them anything up to around £100 for queuing!”

Our man also added, “Many seasoned gamers were saying they’d never seen anything like it. I’m surprised rioting didn’t break out at some stores!”

Read SPOnG’s full account of Japan’s PS3’s queues of shame over the weekend right here.

In other PS3 gaming news, we've been playing a little more with the latest PAL versions of both Resistance and Motorstorm (pictured right), so we'll be bringing you full, detailed previews on both in the very near future.