I got a PS3

[AlanS17]

I picked up a PS3 at the Best Buy midnight launch. I waited about 30 hours. I'm sure plenty of you think that's ridiculous. It's not for me, though. It's a Christmas gift for my brother. So I can't give any dertails on it. It's staying in the box.

Camera crews were everywhere. I spent hours avoiding them so I wouldn't get caught and ruoin the surprise.

The Best Buy hade 40 of the 60GB PS3's and just a buttload of the 20GB PS3's. I got a 20Gb version.

[ChadTower]

Hey, if you choose to do so, glad you succeeded.  I wouldn't make fun of you unless you failed.   

[Buddabing]

Good for you. 30 hours is actually a pretty short wait compared to what some people are doing.

Maybe you should have bought two and sold one on Ebay. If you can get $1000 for one, that's $400 (minus costs, sales tax, Ebay fees, etc), so roughly $300 for your 30 hours "work", or $10/hr. Not bad for sitting/standing in line.

[ChadTower]

Most places limited to one per customer, I believe.

[AlanS17]

Chad is right. It was one per person. Otherwise I would have gotten a few. Most people ahead of me in line were there to sell them.

I started at 74th in line, but after a few people left and they fixed a counting error, I got bumped up to 63.

Getting one at the midnight launch gave me the perfect aliby (sp?). My brother will never suspect that I got one because I was in bed when stores opened today.

... and ignore all the misspellings in the first post. I was delirious from lack of sleep.

[odysseyroc]

Only thing I've ever camped out to get was the house I'm living in now. My wife and I froze our butts off last january to get the only 1/2 acre lot in this phase of our subdivision. It sucked and I don't think I'd ever camp out for anything again. That being said, congratulations and I think it's super awesome you'd do that just for the joy of giving somebody else a gift. 

[ChadTower]

That's definitely a better return on effort than a game console.

[AlanS17]

Oh, I think camping out for a hosue is pretty cool. I've never heard of that. Whatever it takes, though, right? Sometimes it's the only option, regardless of what it is you looking to buy.

[javeryh]

I almost feel guilty... I waited a total of 10 minutes for mine.  A new GameStop opened in town right before the preorders went on sale.  I stopped by on my way to work and there was no line (well, 2 people) so I decided to buy one.  I guess it wasn't on anyone's radar.  If I had crazy friends I totally would have camped for one though - it looks like fun if you come prepared (shelter, beer and food).  Congrats on snagging it - your brother is going to freak out!

[ChadTower]

You'd be playing with fire bringing alcohol... public drinking at an already grey area gathering is a good way to get your ass booted out of line.  Better off just waiting until you get it to break out the beer, or maybe drinking bottle it with something hard.

[AlanS17]

I still wish I hadn't missed the GameStop PS3 pre-order. I would have still camped out for a second unit to sell it.

I barely missed my GameStop pre-order. They sent me a newsletter at 11pm the night before they went on sale. If I had known, I would have been in line at 6am and I would hve gotten one with just a 4 hour wait. I didn't read the newsletter til 10:30 the next morning, though... way too late. At least I have my Wii pre-order.

That's getting way off topic, though. PS3... I bought one...

Waiting in line wasn't so bad, either. Just about everyone was pretty cool - even those people that were just gonna flip 'em. There were a couple of jerks, but out of a crowd of over 100 people, it's inevitable. I had nobody to spot me like most other people did so I had no way to get food, shower, etc. But I was very generous with my stuff when I first got there, and I got paid back for it several times over. I never had to leave for food because I got offered free burgers and pizza every time meal time came around. I almost ate better out there than I usually do at home.

I got a lot of respect from everyone in the line because I was giving mine as a gift. Everyone else was either keeping or selling thiers. So I think I was treated well for that fact.

The camera crews tried to point on me because of my story, but I kept holding blankets and stuff in front of my face so they couldn't see me. As I was walking out the door with my PS3, one of the employees turned to a news crew and said, "There's you story!" As I walked away, I could hear him start to spell it out for them. I wasn't sticking around for the interview.

Here's the kicker. I was able to wait in line since I was unemployed and didn't have to go to work. While I was in line, I got a call from a company I interviewed with earlier in the week, and they offered me a job! So yesterday was doubley good for me.

[ChadTower]

Niiice on the job.   

[shmokes]

My little brother and his girlfriend both got one each.  They camped in line for 56 hours.  I'm helping them sell them on Ebay.  I'm jealous.  They are regularly going for $5000 right now.  I saw some preorders go for $12,000 and $9,000, but a lot of the bids were usernames with zero feedback, so who knows.

[ChadTower]

Guaranteed those were just people effing with the sellers.  They'll go unpaid, the seller will have to wait the standard month or so to file a nonpaying bidder report, and they may miss their chance to make the big profit.

[somunny]

Picked mine up this morning and sold it an hour ago on ebay (BIN).  The buyer was a local guy with 17,000 feedback.  He came over, checked it out and had his wife Paypal me.  Easy as pie. 

$2800 - I'll be picking up a Wii on Sunday with all the trimmings (to keep).

A piece of advice;  I used BIN on ebay with required immediate payment via Paypal.  Cuts down on the sabateurs.

[whatzcrackn]

Picked mine up this morning and sold it an hour ago on ebay (BIN).  The buyer was a local guy with 17,000 feedback.  He came over, checked it out and had his wife Paypal me.  Easy as pie. 

$2800 - I'll be picking up a Wii on Sunday with all the trimmings (to keep).

A piece of advice;  I used BIN on ebay with required immediate payment via Paypal.  Cuts down on the sabateurs.

What is BIN?

[somunny]

Sorry...  Buy It Now.

[deadmoney5]

Picked mine up this morning and sold it an hour ago on ebay (BIN).  The buyer was a local guy with 17,000 feedback.  He came over, checked it out and had his wife Paypal me.  Easy as pie. 

$2800 - I'll be picking up a Wii on Sunday with all the trimmings (to keep).

A piece of advice;  I used BIN on ebay with required immediate payment via Paypal.  Cuts down on the sabateurs.

Must be nice to have too much money...

[Banacek]

You'd be playing with fire bringing alcohol... public drinking at an already grey area gathering is a good way to get your ass booted out of line.  Better off just waiting until you get it to break out the beer, or maybe drinking bottle it with something hard.

That's why God invented flasks.

[AlanS17]

Well I guess the gods are smiling on me...

I walked into a random GameStop in McKinney, TX this afternoon just for the sheer fact that I was bored. They had a single PS3 in stock so I bought it.

I'm going to sell it on Ebay, but I'm going to wait til closer to Christmas. Hopefully then people will be feeling the time crunch and I'll make some better money off of it. Right now, the profit margin on the 20GB is only somewhere between $100-$300. They're selling for well under $1000 now.

On one hand, that means I wouldn't have had to wait in the freezing cold for 30 hours at Best Buy to get the first one. On the other hand, that one is already reserved as a Christmas gift so this allows me the opportunity to sell one on Ebay. Too bad I won't be selling it for $1200+ though.

How could I have known? 

[markrvp]

I bought two today at Gamestop (60 gig).  I'm going to wait until right before Christmas to sell the second one on Ebay.  I was hoping for $1300 to cover what I paid for both of them, but that probably won't happen.

[odysseyroc]

I walked into Target the other night and they had at least 1 PS3 in the case, I decided not to buy it though. There was plenty of people there buying games and accessories, but none of them showed too much interest in the console.

From what I'm hearing on various forums, people hunting for Wiis are running into plenty of PS3s.

[AlanS17]

That's what I've heard, too (about the Wiis). I'm concerned that the hype around the PS3 is coming down. I've got this 20GB version that I may only make $200 on. That really sucks! 

Markrvp, I'm surprised GameStop actually let you buy two units. I figured they would have still just allowed one per customer.

On another note, I stopped in a second GameStop today and they got 6 units today, but they already sold out. I just think GameStops all over the country got a new shipment today. That means Ebay will see another surge.

Hopefully demand goes back up right before Christmas. I know it did for the 360 last year.

[tommy]

I was playing a few PS3 games in the game stop store a few days ago, ever so often the game and console would just freeze up and need to be reset.

Is the PS3 giving you any trouble?

[AlanS17]

I was playing a few PS3 games in the game stop store a few days ago, ever so often the game and console would just freeze up and need to be reset.

Is the PS3 giving you any trouble?

I've got two of them and both are still in their boxes. One is a Christmas gift and the other is for resale.

I haven't been able to find anything online about faulty PS3's. If you were having trouble at a kiosk, I'd be tempted to say it's an isolated situation - possibly aggrevated by keeping the PS3 in an enclosed (though fanned) housing.

The one case I found online of PS3 malfunction was admitted to be an isolated incident.

[tommy]

I was kinda thinking the same thing, with the console in a plastic glass box it might be getting too hot and crashing... the Wii and 360 always ran fine there though in the same environment.

[AlanS17]

Well just today I was at a GameStop and they had a PS2 locking up intermitently, but the PS3 was fine. 

[ChadTower]

I was kinda thinking the same thing, with the console in a plastic glass box it might be getting too hot and crashing... the Wii and 360 always ran fine there though in the same environment.

That's how a lot of people use them at home.  Behind a glass door in the entertainment center.

[AlanS17]

That's how a lot of people use them at home.  Behind a glass door in the entertainment center.

Well that might be acceptable for older consoles like the NES or SNES, but you simply can't do that with the next-gen consoles. You shouldn't even do that to an Xbox or PS2. Anything with a fan should be left in open air. Anything else is just asking for trouble.

An over heating console behind a glass door is not the fault of the console. It's the fault of the idiot putting it behind a glass door. And I don't want to hear, "well you should be able to do that."

[ChadTower]

An over heating console behind a glass door is not the fault of the console. It's the fault of the idiot putting it behind a glass door. And I don't want to hear, "well you should be able to do that."

A decent entertainment center is vented in the back.  Mine is vented in the back.

[AlanS17]

A decent entertainment center is vented in the back.  Mine is vented in the back.

I don't even have an entertainment center, but I'm going to need one soon. My TV has a built-in pedestal. Up til now, I've been using this end table to hold everthing, but that just doesn't cut it anymore. I'll likely be getting something like a vertical rack, though.

Wow... I even derail my OWN threads...

[shmokes]

And I don't want to hear, "well you should be able to do that."

Whether you want to hear it is irrelevant.  You should be able to do that.  A component that is meant to integrate into your entertainment center should be designed under the assumption that it will be put in your entertainment center.  There's absolutely nothing idiotic about a person putting any home theater component behind the glass in their entertainment center that was designed to house just such devices.

The person who puts a home theater component inside their entertainment center is not an idiot.  The person who designs a home theater component that runs too hot to actually be put where home theater components are traditionally meant to go, is an idiot.

[AlanS17]

The person who puts a home theater component inside their entertainment center is not an idiot.  The person who designs a home theater component that runs too hot to actually be put where home theater components are traditionally meant to go, is an idiot.

It's not a home theater component. It's a game console. You can't have a powerful system without heat, and you've got to do something with that heat.

If you're satisfied with your 10-year old game console that doesn't emit much heat, then go for it. You can't have a hard drive-based system or something with massive processing power without a good fan. And that hot air has to go somewhere. It's a necessary trade-off. Who would put an HTPC in a case (unless it's a mini-itx PC with minimal power draw)?

Besides, if game consoles were home theater components, they would have that form factor. All these new consoles stand upright, and you can't stack them. (That stacking comment goes for virtually every console ever made.) Heat issues aside, they barely even fit inside a case. The people who make clearly don't consider them home theater components.

You can't possibly argue that point. You must just be trying to be difficult.

[jubeininja69]

nice

[shmokes]

They integrate directly into your home theater.  They are literally components of your home theater.  Additionally, as though playing games through your receiver and TV weren't enough to make them home theater components (it is), PS2, Xbox, Xbox 360, PS3 and possibly a future version of Wii can play DVD movies.  Are DVD players home theater components?  Xbox, Xbox 360 and PS3 can act as a media center, streaming content like music and movies to your home theater.  Xbox 360 can play HD-DVDs and the PS3 can play BluRay movies out of the box.

I am trying to be difficult, because the suggestion that game consoles aren't home theater components is absurd.  Even without any media capabilities whatsoever they are meant to attach to your receiver and TV.  They are meant to be in your entertainment center with all the rest of your components.  It's not idiotic to put them there.  That's where they go.

As to the formfactor . . . that's ridiculous.  DVD players are home theater components.  Of course they are.  But I've seen all kinds of formfactors for them.  Do they cease to be home theater components if they aren't stackable rectangles?  How about the Sony DVD player below or the Sherwood home theater in a box (DVD player/Surround receiver combination).  Isn't there something vaguely familiar about the formfactors of these home theater components?  Where have you seen things that look like these before?

[shmokes]

You can't have a powerful system without heat, and you've got to do something with that heat.

If you're satisfied with your 10-year old game console that doesn't emit much heat, then go for it. You can't have a hard drive-based system or something with massive processing power without a good fan. And that hot air has to go somewhere.

And, by the way, in spite of the PS3 having an internal power supply (as opposed to an external brick like the 360 and Wii), it runs quiet and cool.

Additionally, it's worth pointing out that while all three of the current consoles can be situated vertically, all three of them are designed to sit horizontally as well, and of the three only the PS3 has a top surface that could not have something else stacked on top of it (though I suppose you could make a convincing argument that the Wii falls in the same category in spite of it's flat surface because of its size). 

[ChadTower]

And, by the way, in spite of the PS3 having an internal power supply (as opposed to an external brick like the 360 and Wii), it runs quiet and cool.

While I agree with your other points, all evidence thus far, anecdotal, media reports, blogs, everywhere you see talk about the PS3, say it runs pretty hot.  I've seen three in person and all three ran hot (two died within days so that skews the sample).

[shmokes]

I've never used a PS3, but here's a couple of accounts I've read about heat/noise:

http://www.joystiq.com/2006/11/15/sonys-system-projects-a-quiet-cool-ps3-delight-1/

http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/clips/sounds-of-ps3-silence-212578.php

The second one only talks about the noise it makes, but low fan noise implies low heat.  I know the PS3 uses custom heat pipes to pull heat away from the CPU and GPU, so this probably has a lot to do with the system running cool enough to be silent.  I'm sure the processors generate lots of heat.  Sony just seems to have designed a good cooling solution to keep the machine running cool.  Cool enough, perhaps, to even put in an entertainment center.   

[ChadTower]

The second one only talks about the noise it makes, but low fan noise implies low heat.

All low fan noise implies is low fan activity.  By itself it doesn't say anything about heat.

All I know from personal experience is that the ones I've seen all ran hot and 2 of the 3 died quick deaths.  Something has to be getting to those PS3s in the kiosks, too, as those reports are consistent.  Equipment seizing is either a major software glitch or exessive heat.  I think I'd rather have a software defect, at least that is fixable with a patch.