Lucky few got game: Crowds go after PS3s, mayor goes after Sony

The Boston Herald ^ | November 18, 2006 | Marie Szaniszlo

[Living Free in NH]

A furious Mayor Thomas M. Menino vowed yesterday to bill Sony Corp. for the chaos that swirled around the release of its PlayStation 3 machine after Boston police had to quell crowds grown frenzied and unruly by the hype surrounding the coveted consoles.

“We had to rush in 12 police cars with officers there and take them off the streets of our city where they’re doing their patrols, to squelch the crowd that we had there,” Menino said, referring to a throng of 500 at Copley Place.

“It’s something that should not be tolerated,” he said. “It’s wrong to take advantage of the public that way, wrong by the manufacturer and by the retailer.”

Japan-based Sony made only 400,000 PlayStation 3’s available for the product’s launch, and thousands camped out for days at stores across the nation for a shot at shelling out $500-plus for the holiday must-have.

“The mayor feels this is a ploy by big business to fill the pockets of their stockholders on the public’s back without any regard for public safety,” said Menino’s spokeswoman, Dot Joyce.

Police had to control crowds at the Copley Plaza Mall’s Sony Style, where throngs rushed the doors at 5 a.m., and at the Fenway Best Buy, where more than 400 people were lined up by noon Thursday.

“It was ridiculous,” said Fernando Villanueva, 22, of the South End, who camped out in the rain starting Wednesday and paid $630 for a PS3. “We tried to keep it orderly by creating a list and having a roll call every half hour,” he said. “But the store said our list was meaningless; it’s going to be a mad rush, and whoever gets through the doors first gets one.”

Police eventually convinced Best Buy to honor the list. But elsewhere, mobs of customers stampeded into stores, injuring a man in Wisconsin and forcing authorities to close a Wal-Mart in California.

In Connecticut, two armed thugs tried to rob a line of people outside a Putnam Wal-Mart at 3 a.m. Michael Penkala of Webster refused to give up his money and was shot, police said. He was in stable condition yesterday at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester with non-life-threatening injuries, said Connecticut State Police Lt. J. Paul Vance.

Sony spokesman Dave Karraker said 400,000 PS3’s were all the company could produce for the launch. The chaos “is not something we planned or foresaw,” he said.

If Sony didn’t, nearly everyone else seemed to know that limited supplies and high demand were a formula for trouble.

“All this hype was created by some marketing ‘genius’ who didn’t think out the end game,” said Hub public relations guru George Regan. “When you have people waiting for hours, even days, in the rain, and someone gets hurt, all for the ‘privilege’ of paying $600 for some game, sooner or later, it’s going to backfire.”

[-YYZ-]

I would tend to blame all the loser fan-boys with too much time on their hands lining up to buy what is, after all, just a freaking toy! Yeah, I like toys - I've got an XBox 360, bought long after the initial rush. I wouldn't line up and rush a store like this to buy anything at any price.