SimplyGames: Your pre-ordered PS4 now costs at least £65 more
Was that attractive £349.99 merely bait?
UPDATE #2: We're getting closer to the truth. SimplyGames customer services has admitted to a Eurogamer reader that the reason the original deal changed was because the shop did not receive as many solus PS4 consoles as it thought it would.
"We can confirm that the reason that we need you to select one of the new bundles is because we will not be receiving as many solus consoles as we first thought that we would be," SimplyGames told Ross, the Eurogamer reader.
"We have therefore made a range of bundles available to you, the cheapest of which is the console-plus-game bundle that comes with either Killzone: Shadow Fall or Watch Dogs for £399.99."
It's worth noting that those official £399.99 bundles were not originally offered when SimplyGames urged pre-order customers to upgrade.
UPDATE: Before this situation blew wide open, on 4th October, Eurogamer reader Douubledog emailed SimplyGames customer services to express his distaste at being forced to upgrade to a bundle he didn't want.
He forwarded me the email he received in reply.
"We can confirm that we have not been deliberately misleading," it read. "We advertised the original console bundles based on the information we received from Sony some time ago.
"We were then contacted late last week and told that the stock configurations were changing and this has led to the change in the bundles that we are able to offer. If we had been advised previously that this may happen, we would have either refrained for pre-selling the consoles or at least made it clear on the site that the bundles may change."
I continue to try and get hold of someone from SimplyGames.
ORIGINAL STORY: When UK-based online shop SimplyGames slapped an attractive pre-order price of £349.99 on its solus PlayStation 4s, people clicked and people pre-ordered.
But now those people are angry, because they can't buy their PlayStation 4 from SimplyGames for £349.99 - the least they can spend is £414.99.
SimplyGames emailed its PS4 pre-order customers at some point last week to tell them things had changed. "Thanks for bearing with us with whilst we finalised stock configurations with Sony," the email began, reposted on the European PlayStation forum. But those stock allocations "DO differ slightly" from what was originally offered.
Customers now "NEED" to update their order and "MUST" choose one of the new console bundles (pictured in article), the cheapest of which is £414.99 - the others are £469.99. Sorry, but that's what SimplyGames was allocated by Sony. An email sent in late September had warned customers that bundle configurations were being worked out, but nowhere did it say the solus PS4 people had ordered would no longer be available to buy.
Look more closely at what customers are now being offered: look specifically at the dual charging cable, an unofficial, non-Sony item. It's a simple USB-to-two-mini-USBs lead that costs £14.85 if bought alone on SimplyGames. It is not the official DualShock 4 dual-charging cradle thing that costs £24.85.
The price isn't really important. The point is that Sony would never bundle a non-official lead in an official bundle - a defence given by Sony to disgruntled SimplyGames customers who got in touch. Sony also issued a statement further undermining its role in SimplyGames' price hike decision. "Sony is not and would not force anyone to buy something they don't want," head of UK PR David Wilson wrote in a statement given to Eurogamer this morning.
"We value our consumers and offered the bundles precisely to give them choice and value. And the key word there is choice. We continue to work closely with our retail partners to ensure we offer this choice against the challenges of managing demand and inventory in the climate of amazing excitement and unprecedented demand for PlayStation 4."
Our tipster wrote: "This company are now trying to force bundles compiled by themselves onto customers who already pre-ordered the standalone console. Myself and others who had already ordered the standalone console at RRP of £349.99 are now being told we have to change to one of their own bundles."
SimplyGames has so far not responded to Eurogamer's request for comment.
Meanwhile, our tipster - the man who started the forum thread and contacted Sony and contacted Trading Standards - has been offered a £349.99 PS4 by SimplyGames with a game thrown in as well. He politely declined.