As California's average gas prices become the nation's highest, Bay Area motorists will be paying an

average of 48 cents more per gallon of gasoline now compared to last month, a AAA spokesman said.

Gas prices are averaging $3.96 per gallon for the Bay Area this month, compared to February's $3.48 per
gallon average, according to the AAA. Californians can expect to pay an average of $3.91 per gallon of gas,
an increase of 50 cents from Feb. 8, according to the AAA.

"Largely due to unrest in the Middle East, investors have been willing to speculate that prices will increase
further and that they will be able to make a profit on the product they are purchasing today," AAA
spokesman Matt Skryja stated in a news release.

Until this uncertainty is removed from the market, crude oil and gasoline prices will rise in the coming days
and weeks, Skryja stated the release.

The national average per gallon of gas is $3.52, which has increased by 40 cents from February's prices,
according to the AAA. As prices rise, so do calls for President Obama to tap into the strategic petroleum
reserve, an emergency stockpile of crude oil that the United States uses to protect the country from
petroleum supply interruptions, AAA officials said. This reserve is designed as a tool to replenish domestic
energy shortages, but AAA officials said that recent price increases have been driven by investor demands,
not traditional supply and demand factors.

AAA recommends that consumers shop aggressively to find the lowest price for gas. The organization offers
cell phone text alerts for low gas prices in local neighborhoods. Consumers can sign up for these alerts
at www.aaa.com/gas.

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Last year, it took several months for the Xbox 360 to be readily available in retail
stores. Chains such as Gamestop/ EB Games were still filling preorders well into
2006 (the system launched 11/21/2005), and it wasn’t until around March or April
that someone could easily walk into a store and walk out with Microsoft’s next-
generation console. Now Nintendo seems to be walking that path, with demand for
the Wii  still far exceeding the available stock. While this time the preorders were
filled right away, people are still hunting and waiting in long lines and hoping to get
lucky in acquiring the system.

It now appears, though, that Sony is having no such issues. A recent check with my
local game store found that they had plenty of Playstation 3’s in stock, and that they
weren’t exactly moving. My first thought was that Sony had caught up with
production and was sending out greater numbers, but the store informed me that
they were still getting the same shipments they’ve been getting all along (roughly 2
systems a week), but that with nobody coming in to purchase the console the stock
is just building up. 

The employees of that store and others report that while they’re still fielding a high
number of Wii-related calls during each day, they can go an entire day without any
inquiries at all about the PS3. One store showed me a scratch pad they kept by the
phone one day, making marks for each Wii call and PS3 call they received. At the
end of that day the Wii had gotten 75, while the PS3 came in at 2.

The other issue the store reported is the high number of returns on the Playstation 3.
These customers, states my source, had in most cases purchased the consoles in the
hopes of making a profit by reselling them online. A quick scan of Ebay, though,
shows that this is no longer an option. The few PS3’s that are posted either have no
bids at all, or are being sold for the retail price or even below (I saw one unopened
60gb unit with a Buy it Now price of $550, $50 below the retail price). So these
people who had hoped to make some easy money are bringing back their purchases
so they can at least break even.

One store that I talked to reported three consoles being returned in one day, while
another said they had gotten four back over the course of the week after Christmas.
These returns, in addition to the stock that is still being sent, adds up to a healthy
stack of systems that the store says they just can’t move. They even remarked that
they had more PS3’s in stock than they had Xbox 360’s. 

Does this ominous start bode badly for Sony? While it is very early in the “console
war”, many people expect the first several months to play out with shortages and
high demand that the manufacturer just can’t keep up with. Now I’m talking to
stores that wish they wouldn’t get any more consoles until they can actually move
the ones they have sitting in their stockrooms. 

Time will tell, of course, and it only takes one title to shift the winds in favor of one
console or another. One employee laughingly told me that they had been sitting on a
stack of GameCubes, both new and used, until Resident Evil 4 was released, and
suddenly they couldn’t keep the system in stock, so it really does ultimately come
down to the games.

Article by Aaron Cohen.

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