another life blog

Does 400,000 units sound a lot to you? My roommates certainly thought that’s a lot - but let’s break it down. 48 states, 10 major cities in each state, 15 major retailer in each city - that’s 7200 stores to stock, a very low estimate that I just thought up, and it results to about 55 units per store. Now, does it still sound a lot? Heh… Now, compound that to the fact Sony PS3 is a Blu-Ray player that by itself, cost at least $1,000 ~ so plopping down $599 is what some videophiles would think of as “cheap HD Player!” People in the state certainly think of it as something special - and I do too.

For the past month or so, people have been selling slips of paper on Ebay.com - ranging from $1000 all the way up to $3000 - preorder slips from EbGames, GameStop, Toys’R'us - and it’s not surprising ~ I had thought to stand in line to pick up a pre-order slip too, but nope, I didn’t think the demand would be so… massive. So yesterday, armed with the knowledge that having a 60 gig system equals to a shitload of profit via Ebay, I convinced Mo to tagged along with me to camp out at BestBuy Southbay Mall Thursday night (Ricky the traitor backed up at the last minute).

Since we had classes, and getting through dental school took priority, we didn’t go to the BestBuy until 5 pm EST. By that time, the neighboring Circuit City had over 50+ people lined up… but BestBuy lot was surprisingly empty! Upon closer inspection, the sign says, “Line Formation starts @ 5:00 am!” I went into the store, asked the clerks how they’re suppose to keep people from lining up, and they responded with, “the police will take care of that… they know what we want them to do.” So, with that in mind, Mo and I went back home thinking we’d sleep in, and wake up at 4 am to line up.

Mistake.

People were parked in the cars, and as soon as the store was closed, zoomed back in line, and the first 31 got it. So that was that. Mo and I went to Bestbuy, waited until they determined what they would do after 5, then came home empty handed. Ah well, at least we didn’t miss class. However, I didn’t despair completely! EBgames emailed me with the news that 20 gig system would go on sale over the Net at Friday Night… I decided that’d be my final chance and I went at it with all I got!

Armed with 2 computers, one VPN to BU network, one on ComCast cable, I had IE (GameStop.com) and Firefox (EBgames.com) opened on each computer. Each browser had 3 tabs opened, one pointing to the main site, one pointing to PS3 section, and last one pointing to the PS3 order information. Every minute, I refreshed the pages in sequence, and at 7:21 PM EST, I hit jackpot The page changed to include Order Detail link, and then it’s the fight against thousands of other Ebayers trying to get their hand on an unit as well. Each step took at least a minute to load, with the final step taking almost 2 or 3 minutes. But, it’s done ~ I spent $994.28 on the bundle, $39.48 on shipping & handling, $49.71 on tax totaling $1083.47. The bundle includes 6 games and other little things ~ currently, just the system by itself, is selling on Ebay for an average of $1,450.00. Hopefully, with all the bundled games and crap, I’d make 1k Cha-ching profit!! ^_^

Much love go to those who were shot, trampled, and beat up over the PS3 system.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 18th, 2006 at 4:15 am and is filed under Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.