Eager to participate in the wild adventures of our youth, Gary Whitta (former EIC of PC Gamer turned motion picture scribe) and I set out to see if we couldn't procure some Xbox 360 units on the eve/day of launch. What we found were people who were about 100 times more hardcore and dedicated to the quest than we (mind you, we both have "alternate" channels of procurement sorted out so the exercise was more for fun than the need to see it through, thankfully).
The Target in San Lorenzo (CA) on Hesperian Boulevard had people lining up at noon for the opening. Ralph, a plumber from San Lorenzo was the first in line. "I'm getting Perfect Dark Zero first," he tells us.
Best Buy at Union Landing in Union City had a gentleman named Eric who'd driven south from Oakland first in line. He'd arrived at 8AM. The line at this Best Buy stretched around the corner and at 10PM PST, it had at roughly 100 people in line. Clearly some bets are being made that some people in front won't be going the distance for the 9AM opening as the store only had about 60 units to sell. As the store was getting ready to close for the night, tables were being set up to display Xbox 360 accessories from Pelican as well as some first party wares.
Similarly, the Wal-Mart at Union Landing, the only 24 hour store for many miles, had handed out its vouchers by 11AM set to be redeemed at midnight tonight. The department management we spoke with indicated that it wasn't supposed to hand out the tickets until 11:30AM, but there was such a line (with more people than the 15 or so units they had) and it was clogging up the store that they opted to hand them out early. As we stopped in at 10PM, loads of people, obviously mostly without tickets, were still milling about the electronics department.
At CompUSA in Pleasanton (which we thought could be our "ace in the hole" solution), we met Zach, a Sears employee, who had been in line since 6:30AM Monday. When queried what games he was going to buy, he said he "I don't know yet". I prodded as to why he could have possibly felt the need to queue up so early if he didn't even know what games he was going to get, he replied "well, it plays Xbox games, doesn't it?". True enough I said, though you'd hardly need to get up as early as he had or spend all night out in the cold to play those games on the Xbox he already owned. Microsoft's formidable marketing machine had the boy whipped into such frenzy about having the machine, the games for which you'd buy it in the first place didn't even enter into the equation. Finally, amid some of the chuckling and teasing from his friends, he said "Call of Duty 2".
This store had only about 13 units total between the core and premium packs (as we'd called the store manager earlier in the day to check) and about 15 people were already in line. Another avenue closed.
A few more stops and we wound up at a Target Greatland in Dublin saw at least 100 people lined up. Having called a few Targets earlier in the day, most had less than 25 units so again, I foresee a fair number of disappointed folks. At 10:30PM the store was still open so we popped in just to see the scene. All was quiet inside. The security guard who was patrolling the front of the store, asked us if we were getting in line. "Not tonight" I told him. "Not tonight."