Houston Community News >> Best Buy Says No to Pre-release Campers

11/14/2006 -- A few days ago, a trip to the Burbank, CA. of media chain Best Buy would reveal up to eleven people already camped out patiently outside of the store, hopefully ensuring that they would be getting a PlayStation 3 come the console's November 17th launch day. Lawn chairs out and tents pitched, these gamers were prepared to wait as many as twelve days to ensure they got their hands on a PS3 at the system's launch.

Unfortunately, their plans were eventually foiled less than halfway into the stakeout - and not by sheer boredom, lack of food, or inability to deal with the cold nights (and hot days) as one might expect.

Instead, a trip to that Best Buy last weekend revealed that the company itself had actually posted a sign outside the front of the store kindly but staunchly forbidding any sort of line-forming prior the days of what one would assume to be the PS3 and Wii launches.

Neither the PS3 or the Wii were mentioned by name on the sign, which attributed all pre-launch fervor to so-called "gaming releases."

Specifically, the sign stated that no line-forming would be allowed until the day of release, which likely means that the very soonest a PS3-hopeful can get in line is midnight on the 17th.

So far, this rule only seems to apply to Best Buy; there has been no word of anything similar happening at other multi-purpose retailers, such as Target. Right now it's not currently known if this rule applies only to this and other select Best Buys, or if it's a national, chain-wide decision.

(Contributed by GAF)