Absurd Singularity

Left the house at 6 this morning in an attempt to pick up an XBox 360. Figured it'd probably be like the PSP launch which wasn't overwhelming. Boy was I wrong. I must've hit 10 different stores between Hudson and Morris counties trying to find a place that wasn't already sold out between 6 and 8 am. Wasn't happening. It's not that there were tons of people (although there probably were but...), there just weren't enough systems. Some places had as few as 5 available. Most were around the 14-15 range. Only 2 places had more than 30. And the store managers were nice enough to let the people waiting know relatively early how many they had so the rest of the people could go search elsewhere or just go home. Hence the short lines.

Apparently a MS spokesperson said yesterday that they weren't intentionally restricting the number of units available for the launch. What a bunch of bull. If this wasn't intentional, then they're the most incompentent bunch of launch planners in the world.

Anyhoo, I don't really need an XBox 360 but figured it'd be fun to see what the launch festivities were like. And if I just happened to manage to lay my hands on one it wouldn't hurt either. But that was not to be. There were some child-doting soccer moms showing up at the Best Buy store right before the 9am opening time who were stunned that they were way too late. But obviously the lucky few who managed to lay their hands on these initial systems were mostly late high school/college students or young professionals.

[UPDATE - 11/23/05]: Maybe I'm not missing out on much after all as reports of wonky behavior are starting to permeate the web. On the other hand I'm having a blast with Nintendogs and Mario Kart DS.