This past week, thousands of diehard Sony fans across the country have foregone sleep and hygiene to camp in line for their chance to be the first to get their hands on a shiny new PlayStation3 at last night's midnight release. On the eve of the PS3's big debut, our friends from PC Gamer magazine made their way through the crowds and hype outside the Sony Metreon in the heart of San Francisco to convert the most zealous Playstation console fans to the PC gaming camp.

The challenge: convince a hardcore Sony fan who has been camping out for days to give up their place in line and agree to never buy a PS3. The bait: a top of the line, custom built gaming rig from Falcon Northwest worth $7,500.

Packed with a 30 " LCD  monitor and enough processing power to make even the mighty PS3 play like the ex-gen console in your closet, it's not surprising that over half of the gamers in line jumped at the chance to give up their place in exchange for this sweet rig - including the first guy in line, who'd been there some 40 hours.

Above: Winner Neal Chung-Lee suffers from a rare disease that forces his eyes closed when a camera flash goes off. But his new PC is a beauty.

Ultimately, names were chosen out of a hat in order to pick a winner, and it was Neal Chung-Lee. In order to prove he's cut ties with his console playing ways, Neal even signed a contract witnessed by a public notary, agreeing to never buy a PS3. Sony bigwig Phil Harrison was apparently invited to check out the rig himself, but chose not to.

Naturally, it's worth mentioning that just under half of the people asked actually chose not to trade a $600 PS3 for a $7500 PC - take from that what you like - and that, if these are the steps needed to turn a PS3 gamer into a PC player, isn't that worse news for PC than PS3? Granted, GamesRadar plays everything, but we're just saying...

You can ponder these questions while playing whatever console you like. Or, you can click here to see more images of the event.

November 17, 2006