XBox 360: Damn it, I didn't pre-order!

OK, I said before that getting an XBox 360 now is totally not worth it, and anyone with brains would wait a year from now--when Halo 3 is out and they've got bundles at a good price. I should have known my early adopter mania would overwhelm me at the last minute. A few things happened between then and now. I read all the XBox 360 hype on IGN, Gamespot, and Team XBox. I actually played XBox 360 at Circuit City on an HDTV and saw how great the graphics were in action. Project Gotham Racing 3, Kameo, and Call of Duty 2 are all top-notch games. In particular, I was blown away by CoD2--I didn't really expect this to look so great, but it does.

And the third thing that happened...suddenly my wife wants to buy a new Plasma TV. Shock follows shock, as Stan Lee used to say. She usually doesn't want to buy things like this. But she wants to do some furniture rearranging and a flat screen TV will make this all work much more smoothly. Whatever the reason, I'll take it!

So what happens to people who didn't pre-order a 360? Unless you got in line today (Monday 3/21) at around 12 noon, you might be screwed. After calling the local stores, I found the following store openings and inventory levels:

• Best Buy: Opens at 8am with 64 consoles
• Wal-Mart: Opens at 7am with ~30 consoles
• Target: Opens at 8am with 16 consoles
• Circuit City: Opens at 10am with 19 consoles

Most of these are the $400 consoles with the hard drive. It would be crappy to be last in line and have only the $300 package to buy. I'll buzz around these places in the morning and see how long the lines are.

Whatever happens, I won't buy the XBox 360 on EBay. No way! I can imagine the prices will go from $500-$1000 in the first two weeks. Nuff said.

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