A few days after the U.S. release of both Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii, I thought I'd take an informal, unscientific look at what the public is saying about the consoles. The barometer I chose, eBay. Currently, the Wii is fetching (or at least seeking) between $300 and $500 per unit on eBay, some include games, but the markup ranges between 20% and 100% over the $250 Wall-Mart is charging for the Wii. A hefty premium to pay, without doubt, but nothing compared to the market the PlayStation 3 has created.

The retail price of the two models of the PlayStation 3 are $500 for the model with the 20GB hard drive, and $600 for the 60GB model. The price range on eBay: $700 to $1,500. The bidding for PlayStations seems to be mostly taking place in the sub-$1,000 neighborhood. It's obviously way too early to declare a winner, but Sony is definitely in the lead as far as demand is concerned. This may be due to the fact that it shipped only 400,000 units to the U.S., or maybe it's a better machine. In the mean time, Microsoft's XBox 360 is readily available at just about any electronics or toy retailer if you want to settle for last year's hot Christmas gift. — Brian Ward