No sleep and no HD gaming either
What a critical mistake on my part; frankly, it cost me an Xbox 360 on day one. My local WalMart
had 14 consoles; ten Cores and four Premiums. I showed up there at 3:26
a.m. and was person number 14! Thinking I could score a Premium
elsewhere, I left and you already know the rest of the story. I hit
seven locations and drove for about two hours, but it was the same
everywhere I went: more people than consoles everywhere.Lesson learned: get what you can when you can! I hope all of you hard-core gamers and HD fanatics made out better than me. Now, it's time for an hour of sleep and some more posting on the WMCE project box!
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
HX @ Nov 22nd 2005 10:29AM
Here is my tale of the Hunt for 360.
On my way home last night at around 1 AM I passed the Target near my house and saw that people were camping out. I headed home and went to sleep (just put in an 80 hour week at work to get a release out of a new product, Talkman T5, coincidently released on November 22, 2005; shameless plug: www.vocollect.com). I got up and arrived at Target around 7 AM to find out that they handed out the tickets for the 360s at 6:30 AM and they only had 6 of each SKU. So I proceeded to Sams Club where the line that had been standing outside prior to my arrival was now inside getting 360s. They had 20 of them and were already sold out. So I continued on my journey to Toys R Us where there was a line of about 20 people. I spoke with some of the people in line and they said that no one from Toys R Us had spoken to them yet. So based on my previous experience I decided not to wait in that line, instead I proceeded to Sears. I ended up third in line at the lower entrance. They opened up the doors at 8 AM, mind you there was a second line at the 2nd floor entrance. Well apparently they opened up that door first and by the time I reached the electronics department I was 5th in line. The cashier came over and said that they only had 2 360s. Needless to say, I gave up and went to work. I will be waiting patiently by the phone for the call from EB about my preorder. Until then I will live vicariously through my friends who preordered early enough to get one on launch day. The End!
Nephus @ Nov 22nd 2005 3:05PM
I almost repeated your mistake. I went to Wal-Mart and they had 2 core systems left, and I just walked away. I instead drove for an hour to get to the nearest large-ish city that had both a Target and a Best Buy. Target was my first choice since I figured no one would think to camp out there. Boy was I wrong. Fortunately I also had the leaked information about how many that particular Best Buy was getting, and only 7 spots were left for the premium sets. My wife and I sat there from 2:30AM EST until they handed out tickets at 7:45AM. We were warned that we had to be there at 9AM or our system would be sold to someone else. Well, the call of nature was enough to make us risk that, and breakfast sounded pretty good. 20 minutes later we were back from Steak and Shake (best one I've ever been to, they usually have horrible service) and freezing in the cold again.
At this point, they had opened up the first set of doors, and were letting us in 7 at a time to play on a widescreen set they had in the lobby. Unfortunately all they had was Ridge Racer. Some people seriously started questioning why they had been waiting so long after playing that game. The controls were horrible. It looked pretty, but a fresh coat of paint can't save a terrible gameplay experience. I like the idea of setting a monstrous HD set in front of a captive audience for boosting sales, but put a good game on it.
Of course, my mission was simple. Just get the system, and a memory card for kiosk downloads. Then the more I waited, I saw the wisdom of an extra controller. Batteries are expensive, so play and charge kits will save money over time. I have no idea where my TV and satelite remotes are, so one of those spiffy universal remotes would be nice too. Oh, and a face plate for the wife. And since I can't pick just one game.... that simple little purchase plan quickly grew into $790 as my wife got suckered into the service plan, even though a better one was offered for the same price inside the box. (I tried to tell her that they were lying about Microsoft's service plans, but I was too tired to fight about it.)
So yeah, when I get home from my 10 hour shift (after staying awake for 24 hours by the time I had that 360 in my hands) I'm shooting some Nazis on COD2. I think I deserve it.