Xbox 360 Lines

Just for grins, last night at about 9:50pm l went to check out the line for WalMart in Linden NJ’s midnight Xbox360 sale. It was cold and rainy when I got there. There were about 25 people in front of me. I hung out and talked to the people around me. Reportedly they had 14 systems… 4 premium and 10 core (kind of ridiculous). At 10:45 a manager came out and confirmed the total and breakdown. He counted of 14 people and let them in. He also told us WalMart had received a total of 60,000 systems for all of their stores (also ridiculous).

This morning, also for grins and expecting nothing I went to the Circuit City in Upper West Manhattan. There were at least 50 people in front of me and they had reportedly been letting people in “for a while”. Circuit had maybe been selling them since about 7am. Of course, long before me they were sold out. On the subway I talked to two of the guys who got systems. They had gotten in line last night at 10pm and they had only gotten Core systems… And they had gotten literally the last two. People who had gotten in line just minutes behind them, spent the night in the almost freezing rain went home at 10am empty-handed. Hopefully they were aware of the shortage, but, I overheard at least a couple people angrily stating “that’s unfair.” I stand by the fact that the Microsoft-imposed shortage is stupid, but, ummm…. Not unfair. Oh well, people have a funny sense of fair.

Off to work…