First I have to say that I already own a Wii and a 360. This obsession with technology is something that my friends laugh at and parents never understood but it will drive me for a long time. I knew I had to have a PS3 eventually, but I was prepared to wait until March or June even. The only game that I wanted for PS3 right now was Resistance: Fall of Man and that was only because it was exclusive to PS3. Reviews on it were decent and I love sci-fi shooters. Anyway I had already passed on a few online bundles because they were including obscene numbers of games (Walmart’s bundle was up to 10 games, I couldn’t honestly tell you that there were 10 games available at launch). I *was* using PS3 Locator off of XPBargains.com on the hopes of finding a bundle that wasn’t ridiculous, but wasn’t having any luck.
Then there were stories about Best Buy hoarding their stock of PS3′s to release a December 31st flood. The stories said 25 per store, minimum! That was more PS3′s than most of us thought existed – and based on data from Hoover’s that would be 785 stores x 25 units = 19,625 total PS3′s available on December 31st. Based on a $600 per PS3 price that means about $11,775,000 that SHOULD sell in a few minutes, right? Wrong. Read on.
I decided to drive by the Austin arboretum store just before midnight on December 30th. To my surprise there was no line, no one waiting yet to get one of these 60GB PS3′s, and seemingly no interest at all. I figured it must be the holidays and at some point in the near future the line would start collecting. I didn’t want to sleep there to get one of these, and now significantly doubted that I’d have to, so why not just get up early the next morning and roll on over to check it out. I was taking a chance but I didn’t really have to get a PS3 right now anyway.
I got up at 5:45AM, threw on some clothes, let the dog out, and headed over to Best Buy. There was no one waiting. I saw a few cars that looked like people MIGHT be waiting, but turns out one was an employee that had to head in momentarily and another was a security guard (maybe to contain the mayhem that was about to ensue? I was hopeful). This is the scene at the Best Buy that morning:
I had my Macbook in hand and a fresh cup (or 4) of coffee so whatever, I’m ready to wait. I wanted to get a PS3 at this point and I fully expected Murphy’s Law to kick in if I even attempted to leave. Soon enough a (very cool) Best Buy employee comes out and asks what I’m there for. I didn’t realize there was a choice – so I asked what else COULD I be there for. So this is when it starts to get interesting – he said that most people were asking about the Nintendo Wii. Most people? There wasn’t anyone there. He told me that a bunch of people had already been there but all were asking about a Wii. When told that there were PS3′s available they usually left. I was first in line, what an accomplishment, and I was definitely getting a PS3. At 9am. And it was 6:15.
I spent the next few hours playing Wingnuts 2 (demo, and surprisingly fun) and chatting it up with other folks as they waited in line. No wait, they didn’t wait at all – once they found out the Wii wasn’t coming, they left. Here’s what the line looked like right up until they started handing out tickets:
I finally got a ticket and sure enough it was numbered. Amazingly they had NO ONE ELSE show up for a PS3. I called a friend of mine at 8:30 to tell him they were available because he’d been looking for one for a while. He appreciated it. And got one. Easily. By showing up at 9:00AM, three full hours after I did. Clearly the demand for PS3 is simply not the same as for the Wii.
Update: When I stopped back in that same store at 2:00PM they still had 8 60GB and 1 20GB units left. The store was packed, signage was up that they had the units available, but nothing. They weren’t selling. I’m sure they sold them by the end of the day but it is still quite surprising that these units didn’t sell faster. Or maybe it isn’t.
