Went back to the neighborhood PS3 line today. The line-waiters have tarps to keep out the rain (and one guy said that they've been hanging out under the tarps to get passersby to quit asking them stupid questions).

Turns out the Best Buy buddies I've been blogging about have the right idea. There were only about 75 people in line there this morning; the first one got there on Tuesday morning. Just 10 blocks south, however, at the Circuit City at Union Square, a much larger crowd was lined up, some with very little chance of actually getting a console to take home. According to the line-dwellers, Circuit City only has a couple hundred units to hand out. 100 of the top PS3s and 60 of the 20GB PS3s will be sold, and the remaining 40 will be raffled to those waiting in line who didn't get one. Ouch. To make things worse, fights have reportedly been breaking out over line cutting and saving spaces and so on.

We sent intern Angela Chang to the Sony store to check out the ground zero of game waiting, and she returned with pics of a huge crowd getting antsy for tonight. We'll have a full story up on PCMag.com shortly, and we'll be attending launch parties in SF and NYC tonight, so check back tomorrow for our full report. If the U.S. launch is anything like the glitchy Japanese launch, we'll be having a great ol' time over the next few days.

Post by Kyle Monson