My PS3 Preordering Adventure
Matt posted in Playstation 3 on October 12th, 2006

So, as most of you are probably aware, EB Games and Gamestop had preorders for the Playstation 3 Tuesday morning. The news was only announced Monday. The first I heard of it was through the gamestop mailing list. I called four EB stores as well as gamestops close to my apartment. The first one I called said they were doing it, and they had 16 units to give out. I couldn’t get through to the second and third stores. One didn’t answer the phone and the other’s line was busy. (I did call back to no avail) Another store said they would call me if I preordered a PS3 title, so I put $5 down. I called up that store to ask about their deal, and they said, “call back tomorrow.” I told them that I already heard from another EB Games that they are doing preorders tomorrow. He said they were only calling people who preordered a PS3 title about the deal. I told him I had preordered a title, and he said they were allowing preorders tomorrow morning. I asked why I hadn’t received a call, and he said he was going to try to get them done before he left today. Otherwise, he’d call tomorrow. I certainly wasn’t going to wait around to get called (and they did not call me anyway). I was hoping that the information wouldn’t get spread all over the web until Tuesday or at least late Monday, but soon, gamestop.com put it on their website, and Joystiq and Kotaku both had posts about it. So much for trying to reward people for reserving games and signing up for their mailing list. I am rather busy with work, so I wasn’t really planning on spending the whole night in line. On my way home from work at about 12:20 am, I checked out the line at the EB by my house. There were already 12 people camping out. I figured if I had any chance to get a PS3 at launch, I’d have to start waiting now. The only problem was I was still wearing shorts and a T-shirt since I came from work, and it was going to be a bit of a chilly night. I called my friend, and he was kind enough to bring a sleeping bag, blankets some snacks and a DS to keep me occupied. I certainly wasn’t going to leave for fear of losing my place in line. I was 13th, and that’s very close to 14, which may be how many they are giving out to customers since the employees can buy 2. (I don’t know if the 16 included the 2 for the employees or not, but I didn’t want to find out on launch day)

My friends stayed from about 1 to 2 am chatting, so that was pretty cool. Then, I figured I’d try and get some sleep. I have trouble sleeping in my own bed, and this certainly was not a good sleeping environment. Cement is unfortunately rather hard, and the sleeping bag wasn’t able to soften it enough. It was rather ironic that there was a mattress store right next to the EB games with big comfy beds on display taunting me all night. There were very bright lights in the parking lot that made sleeping much more difficult too. Although I am eternally grateful to my friends for bringing me some supplies, the sleeping bag I was using was  rather hot. It was rated to be comfortable at -20 degrees Fahrenheit. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make it comfortable at 50 degrees Fahrenheit. If I unzipped it, I’d be too cold. Otherwise I felt like I was roasting in an oven. The EB Games I waited at (Overland and Venice Blvd) is by the 405, and Venice Blvd is rather busy also, so the traffic noises weren’t relaxing. There were other noises like a very old woman with a very squeaky small cart that slowly pushed it across the parking lot in the middle of the night. I thought it was rather odd for her to be out that late because it was 3 am or something like that, but I didn’t question her about it.

I ended up getting a half an hour of sleep from about 4 am to 4:30 am. That was it. There is a Ballys close by, and apparently there’s a mad rush to get there at 5 am. By about 7:30 am, everyone started putting away their camping equipment, bedding, etc and forming a line since a lot of people were showing up in the morning. The EB games guy showed up at 9 am, and said they were going to let 3 people in at a time. They didn’t have the SKU to reserve Wiis, but they were going to reserve them anyway if you put $50 down. (They marked you down as reserving Sonic, but they were going to transfer the balance over when they got the SKU) People from IGN showed up to see how things were going. Apparently, their office is right across from the Best Buy that is in the same complex as the EB. They were nice and gave out IGN shirts. They took a lot of pictures, which I can be seen in. All of them are here: (I’m the one with red shoes that looks half dead)

 

I look terrible as most people with 1/2 hour of sleep do, but for most of the other pictures, I at least tried to pose.

I’m also peeking my head out in the back on kotaku, but I’m not as visible as I would have liked. I thought it was really amusing that one guy asked the guy who went over to talk to IGN where Jessica Chobot was. It turned out that the guy had already asked the IGN people, and apparently she was on G4 that morning. If you don’t recognize the name, I don’t blame you. Jessica Chobot is a reporter at IGN, but she’s female, so that has made gained her a lot of notoriety in the gaming community I guess. I don’t really have a desire to meet her, but if I did, I’d ask her why she was so nice to Uwe Boll in the dinner with Uwe feature. She didn’t treat him like the criminal he is. The dinner is like an hour long, so I imagine she didn’t want to tear into him at the beginning, but  she could have at least told him that his movies sucked at the very end of the interview. I can’t imagine anyone at IGN liked any of those films, so they should have told Uwe how bad they are and watched him complain about how everyone was unfair. He certainly did complain about people on the internet being unfair, and Jessica agreed with him instead of telling him how right they are about his poor excuses for films. I should try and train in boxing, so the next time he wants to beat up his critics I can give him what’s coming to him. Too bad I have better things to do than beating the crap out of bad directors. But, I digress.

Several people in line were much more excited about the Wii, yet they still wanted to pick up a PS3. One guy was buying a PS3, so he could ebay it and get a Wii from his profits, but most people weren’t really interested in ebaying it at the EB I waited at, which was reassuring. That or they were denying it to avoid a potential lynching. I’d feel really bad if I didn’t get one, and everyone who did put it up on ebay to make a quick buck. People are already ebaying the PS3s guaranteed at launch, although it seems stupid because they aren’t guaranteed to get it. Looking at the numbers, EB games only preordered 28,800 and 57,600 units nationwide at 3,600 stores, it seems reasonable to expect that EB Games and Gamestop will be able to get that many, but who knows. Apparently, the EB games I preordered at didn’t get any Xbox 360s at launch due to some sort of mistake. So, anyone who spends over a thousand dollars on something they aren’t guaranteed to get at launch isn’t very prudent.

People kept showing up from 9:30 am to10:30 am, and they seemed genuinely surprised that they wouldn’t be able to get a PS3. These people were in the older crowd, so I imagine that they were buying for their children and weren’t in touch with the gamer news. It’s a bit hard to feel sorry for them though after waiting in line for 10 hours and only getting a half an hour of sleep. I was able to preorder my PS3 with no problem. I was unsure which PS3 I’d have a better chance getting, the 20 gig or the 60 gig. Since the cheaper model has HDMI and all the parts are upgradeable, I don’t really feel like paying an extra $100 if I don’t have to. All you get is 40 extra gig, card readers I’m never going to use (PS3 doesn’t have a PS2 card slot built in, which is what I’m really interested in, although they are selling that), and I’d rather use wired since I have a switch downstairs for my Xbox and 360 already. Once I fill my hard disk up, I can probably swap in a huge, fast hard disk for cheaper than $100 and have the coolest PS3 on the block. The guy behind the counter (as well as another guy who preordered) seemed shocked, and they tried to persuade me otherwise, but I stuck to my guns once I found out no one else reserved a 20 gig. That way, if any 20 gigs come into the store (which is likely), I’ll be the first they call about it.

Reserving a Wii was a bit more of an ordeal because they were only planning on letting the people who they called reserve it, but I told them I reserved a game at a different EB (which is true) and that EB didn’t call me about the Wii either (which is also true). They talked it over and agreed that they’d let me preorder it. They said they only had 20, and once those were gone, that was all they were taking for the Wii at this point. Since there is over twice the numbers of Wiis planned to ship to North America than PS3s, you’d think they’d at least reserve 32, but I guess it was before they were officially supposed to reserve them, so it seems reasonable that they were reluctant. Finally, after 10 hours of waiting, I was able to preorder both systems. Since we are very busy at work presently, I took a shower, got in my car, drove for a half an hour to work, and ended up at work at 11:15 am. It was a bit tough working on 1/2 an hour of sleep, but I’ve worked through the night a few times, so I could deal with it. I put in about 10 hours of work before I went home to catch up on some rest. I talked to a co-worker, and he said he got one by showing up at 7:00 am at a EB games up in Ventura. That was a bit frustrating because I had to go through a terrible ordeal to get mine, but at least I was able to preorder one. There were people who showed up to the EB games where I camped out at 7 am, and they certainly did not get a PS3. Was it worth waiting? I think so. It will be if I get it at launch. I’m not convinced I will, but I can hope.