PS3 Launch Diary, Continued

Circuit City management was nice enough to let us and other media to enter the store before the doors reopened to set up video cameras and take pictures of the set up. While there were only a few PS3 titles available, such as Resistance: Fall of Man, Madden NFL 07, and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. But there sure were a ton of Blu-ray movies. While the Blu-ray player be enough of an attraction to justify a $599 price tag?

We got some bad news just before the doors opened. "You know, two guys got robbed at gunpoint a few miles down the road," the police officer said.

I froze.

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"Wait, what?" Midnight was minutes away, and we were in the Circuit City store in Hawthorne, Calif. Two Hawthorne police officers described how authorities nearby had responded to two incidents involving thefts of PlayStation 3s by armed assailants. My TG colleagues and I had been chatting all day and night about what kind of chaos we might see at the midnight sales; we talked about the incident at the Super Wal-Mart in Palmdale, Calif., Wednesday, where several eager shoppers got violent and unruly, forcing the police to shut the store down. Then there was the ill-advised "musical chairs" incident at a Wal-Mart in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And of course, there was the "drive-by" shooting - albeit with a pellet gun - that injured four people outside of a Best Buy in Kentucky. Okay, so it was a BB gun and not a Mac-10. Still, I was unnerved. Now I was hearing about real guns being used to rob two PS3 owners just a couple miles down the road.

All of the sudden, L.A. has turned into freakin' Baghdad. All over a video game console.

The clock finally struck midnight and the doors opened. The first 10 or so people in line, all members of the Man Law group, were escorted through the door in an orderly fashion, with Circuit City employees line up to congratulate them with applause. It was another nice touch.

The Man Law group made their way through the store, grabbing some cables and an extra PS3 controller, before picking up their PS3s at the checkout counter. None of the group bought any games - they had all pre-ordered their games.

We talked with some of Man Law guys after they checked out. Even after waiting in line for several days and had gotten little sleep, they were pretty pumped up. A couple of them even said they planned on firing up the console before hitting the rack for some well-deserved sleep.

Before the Man Law guys left the store with their booty, Humphrey informed them that two PS3 owners had been robbed at gunpoint just down the road, and that they should think about taking a zigzag route home to avoid being followed by potential thieves. Their enthusiasm and excitement quickly turned to disbelief and concern. The authorities also suggested taking an indirect route home would be a prudent course of action. You know, just to be on the safe side and avoid getting shot.

As we departed the Circuit City parking lot after wrapping up our coverage, I scanned the parking lots to make sure no sketchy characters were eyeballing us. It was pretty clear we were reporters, since we were carrying cameras and video equipment. But to use such information as a security blanket would also require an assumption that there are no stupid people in the world. And that certainly wasn't the case at a Best Buy in Alpharetta, Georgia. Kotaku reported on an unfortunate soul named Dave who was essentially stalked from one Best Buy all the way across town to another store and then had his car broken into by someone who assumed he had a PS3 in the trunk (turns out, he did not). It would have been easy for some idiot to assume that we walked away with a couple of PS3s since we were let into the store before the sale started at midnight.

Luckily, no one followed us home (believe me, I was checking the rearview mirror on a regular basis). I'm not sure when I'll get my "I Survived the PlayStation 3 Launch" will be coming in the mail, but it won't be soon enough.

For further reading, check out TG Daily:
PS3 midnight launch: Elation turns to fear as PS3 buyers go home

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