Ben-DutkaThe preorder insanity continues.
The Japanese branch of online retailer Amazon.com began taking preorders for the PS3 at 7 pm Monday night Japan time, and according to the Japanese website Gameaholic, Amazon's entire launch-day quota was gone in under 20 minutes.
The consumer blitz certainly mirros that of last week's EB/GameStop preorder ordeal, where gamers camped out for a shot at nailing down one of those prized receipts. Obviously, the console is not going to be easy to locate this holiday season, especially with Sony scaling back on its launch designs. Initially, they wanted to have 4 million PS3s on store shelves in the U.S., Europe, and Japan by the end of the year. But now they've halved that estimate and knocked the number of available systems down to 400,000 for the U.S. and 100,000 for Japan.
Still, despite the preorder disappearance, gamers from both the U.S. and Japan will have a chance to land a system on launch day. GameStop and EB have yet to begin their online preorder campaigns, and the truly hardcore can always camp out in front of Best Buys (expected to receive half the U.S. PS3 shipment of 200,000) come launch day.
The PS3 is set for release in Japan on November 11 and in the U.S. on November 17.
