Got 360?

Well, for anyone who's interested, which I suspect is noone, since even I am fairly indifferent: the XBox 360 launched yesterday to engineered mayhem due to possibly intentional shortages causing demand to exceed supply all over the continent. The next generation of gaming has begun. Its launch lineup is generally agreed to be middling at best, and personally there's not a single game in it I even want to so much as play, but I've seen one up and running at the EB a couple of times recently and I've got to say-- it looks very nice. Only time will tell if I'm able to resist the urge to buy one (it's a weak urge presently, fueled only by promises of Bioware games to come, but it's there).

Anyway, there are lots of horror stories floating around about the launch, including grossly inflated resales and an armed robbery, but my favorite is this one:

"On Tuesday, GameSpot staffers witnessed even more chaotic scenes at the local Target in Colma, on the peninsula south of San Francisco. There, a lone security guard spent most of the night shooing an increasingly unruly crowd away from the parking lot. The situation nearly spun out of control around 7 a.m., when the guard left his post for five minutes, prompting a mass influx of would-be customers eager to receive vouchers good for a 360. When he returned, the security guard's attempts to get the 100-plus-person crowd to form a line were rebuffed until the arrival of police and a California National Guardsman around 8 a.m. A trio of veteran GameSpotters witnessed the Guardsman quickly take control of the situation and move to the head of the line--where he promptly turned around and asked for a 360 voucher himself. The Guardsman then promptly fled the scene, voucher in hand, leaving police, Target employees, and a visibly agitated crowd to fend for themselves."

I love people.