PS3 Launch Diary

While other retail locations were plagued by chaos and crime, my colleagues at Toms Hardware (Humphrey Cheung and Mark Raby of TG Daily as well as video man extraordinaire Max Wilson) had an interesting, violence-free night at the Circuit City in Hawthorne, Calif. Initially, I was worried about what kind of mayhem we might see there because the store announced it had 100 60 GB PS3s ready to go on sale at midnight, while many other retail locations in America had only 20 or so units. The reported shortage of the consoles - Sony had originally planned on having 400,000 PS3s for Thursday night's launch, but reportedly ended up shipping half that number - was sure to enhance the frenzy.

When we arrived at the Circuit City Thursday afternoon, it was a mostly calm scene. Here's what happened:

Slide Show

We hooked up with a group of 19-year-olds at the beginning of the line. The group referred to themselves as the "Man Law" crew and there were about 10 of them in line. All of them said they planned on keeping their PS3's rather than selling them - unless someone were to offer $1,500 in cash, they said.

Pretty much everybody in line was wearing a black PlayStation 3 T-shirt. the Circuit City management and local police did a pretty good job of keeping the peace the day of the launch. Circuit City passed out black PS3 T-shirts early Thursday morning to all the people waiting in line; the shirts became unofficial place holders for people in line so

The folks in line kept themselves entertained over the previous three or four days by playing cards, chess board games, skateboarding and even a touch football game in the parking lot between the Circuit City crowd and the Best Buy line across the street. The Circuit City guys won.

A couple Circuit City employees brought out donuts for the hungry people in line Thursday morning. Nice touch.

After a lull in the conversation with the Man Law group, it occurred to me that the really awful elevator/pop music playing inside the Circuit City was also being broadcast outside near the front entrance. Oddly enough, the music plays all night, so when the people in line were trying to sleep they were subjected to such memorable melodies as "Killing Me Softly." Yuck.

The people in line at Circuit City were mostly well-behaved folks who didn't lose their heads after waiting for several days in tents and camping chairs outside the store. However, there were a couple of bad apples in the bunch. One annoying chucklehead who was hanging around the line, without a PS3 shirt, was talking smack to people while drinking a can of Miller Lite (smart kid - I heard he was later asked to leave by the police).

We walked across the street to the Best Buy, which wasn't having a midnight sale but nevertheless had a few dozen people lined up in tents and chair outside the store entrance. The group looked tired and somber. Perhaps this was because the store had significantly fewer units to sell and the crowd was going to have to wait another night to get their hands on a PS3. We talked with a few people and it seemed like many of them were planning on auctioning their PS3s rather than play them. I asked one guy in line what his favorite games were. "Oh, I'm not a gamer," he said. "I'm just trying to sell it and make some money."

How nice.

The Circuit City parking lot started getting crazy after the sun went down. Radio station KROQ showed up to raffle off five PS3s. Soon there were two lines: one for the KROQ raffle and one for the store. It got a little chaotic, especially at the back of the store line, but no serious problems emerged.

The Circuit City managers - accompanied by police escorts - began handing out PS3 vouchers to the people in line for the store sale. Sadly, not every person wearing a PS3 T-shirt got a voucher, since there were well over 100 people waiting in line. That left quite a few dejected and discouraged people leaving the parking lot.