Blind luck

So yesterday morning I get to work and go to http://xbox360tracker.com/. I notice that every site lists the 360 as “Sold Out” except for the ones selling $2000 “You’re an idiot if you buy this” bundles or eBay with their own overpriced rip-offs. For some unknown reason I leave the screen up and start working. I refresh the site every couple of minutes or so. Then the impossible happens. Circuit City is listing the Premium as “In Stock”. My heart skips a beat and I click on the link. Holy crap! They did have them in stock. I place my order for the Premium Bundle (Premium package, PGR, extra controller and a memory card). Circuit City, being the cool cats that they are, actually let you remove the items from the order that you don’t want, so I immediately get rid of the memory card and PGR. I’m furiously typing in my information, fearful that they might sell out any second. The site refuses my credit card three times before it finally goes through. My palms are sweating by now. I print out my order and wait for the confirmation e-mail that I should be receiving shortly.

Shortly my ass. I have heard horror stories of others that have placed orders on-line only to receive an e-mail stating that their order had to cancelled, or that it was on back-order. I was getting very, very worried.

I call up Powerpuff and tell him to get his ass to circuitcity.com because I had just placed an order for a 360. Unfortunately, he was stuck in traffic on his commute to work and he wasn’t going to be able to check for a while.

Finally, around three hours later, I receive my confirmation. My order went through and the 360 is being sent to FedEx for delivery. I decided not to opt for next day delivery considering it was an extra $50, so it should be arriving within the next week or so.

I feel a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. That sense of desperation - of thinking “maybe if I go to Best Buy right now, or Target, I might find one” - is gone. That’s all behind me. If all goes as planned, I can stay home, relax, play Guitar Hero and let the 360 come to me.

Powerpuff wasn’t so lucky. They sold out well before the time he got to work. His search continues, but it won’t be as diligent as it once was. You see, spending a month tracking down a videogame system tends to wear a person down. Add to that bad customer service and rude employees, and after a while you just tell yourself, “To hell with this, I’ll wait until they are readily available everywhere”. It also doesn’t help when you walk into Toys R’ Us - after just coming away empty handed from BB and CompUSA - and seeing 40 Xbox 360 boxes stacked up, not a soul in sight. After you try to contain the girlish scream from escaping your lips and trying your best not to look like a five year old in a toy store running at the 360's at full speed, and once you get up to that ever-elusive box, that you pick it up and notice that they are all empty. All 40 of them. Nice Toys R’ Us, you fucking teasing bastards. Yes, all that happened to my buddy Powerpuff, so one can’t help but understand the frustration he feels. Hell, I felt it myself, and continue to feel it for him.

Fact is, this 360 launch has been an ugly one. Successful for Microsoft? Sure. They have the hottest gift of the holiday season. The system shortage has actually made people want a 360 more now than they probably did before. But what about the gamers out there that have yet to get one? All we wanted was to get a little gaming in, especially with all these great long weekends at the end of the year. Us, the fans who supported the original Xbox and made it what it is today, many of us are still left without systems, and yet hundreds of thousands of systems are collecting dust on Japanese store shelves. Bill, do you think maybe there was a reason why no other company has tried to do a world wide launch of a new system? That’s right, because it is not possible to do correctly. Now your biggest supporters and fans, the ones here in the good old US of A, are left with nothing, while your resources are going to waste elsewhere. That’s a damn shame.

Anyway, hopefully my unit will arrive soon. Hopefully, I’ll be able to give hands on impressions of this so-called “next generation”. And hopefully sometime in the near future, Powerpuff and I can finally do our all night Perfect Dark Co-op marathon.