KitGuru spoke this afternoon to a large UK retail outlet, they told us that a growing number of Playstation 3 consoles are being returned for trade ins.

This afternoon we spoke with an employee of one of the largest retail chains in the UK who told us that Sony consoles are being return ‘en masse' for trade in deals for the Xbox 360 and even the Nintendo 3DS.

The employee told us that after the network outage, only a few consoles were returned, after customers got irritated with downtime and security concerns. In the last week however, the return rate has increased by more than 300 percent.

KitGuru was told that customers are not only concerned with potential credit card issues, but that recent downtime has been a main deciding factor. The online capabilities are one of the biggest selling points for the Playstation 3, and for weeks now there has been no networking support at all. Customers have been complaining about the lack of information, with many ‘non tech' people only finding out recently via television news channels why they couldn't connect to the PSN.

According to our retail source, at least 35% of the returns are trade in deals for the Xbox 360, which still clearly has high consumer faith.

Sony have offered customers freebies, when their network finally gets rebooted, but apparently people are either tired waiting, or they are moving elsewhere for a less painful experience.

KitGuru says: Microsoft will certainly be rubbing their hands in joy.

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