Overwhelming demand for Sony's new PlayStation 3 forced major electronics retailers websites offline on Friday, the North American launch date for the highly anticipated video game console.
The websites for electronics retailers Future Shop and Best Buy were unavailable for parts of the day due to unanticipated traffic prompted by gaming enthusiasts seeking to buy a PS3.
People camped out all night to buy a new Sony Playstation 3 consoles. This Best Buy in Toronto had only 29 consoles to sell.
(Nathan Denette/Canadian Press)
Both sites were sold out when they were back online.
"The FutureShop.ca site was never completely down," Lori DeCou told CBC News Online.
However, BestBuy.ca suffered a sustained outage with increasing traffic throughout the day, said DeCou, director of corporate communications for Burnaby-based Best Buy Canada Ltd., the subsidiary of U.S.-based Best Buy Co. Inc., which owns its namesake stores and the Future Shop chain.
"Volumes were beyond our expectations," DeCou said, explaining that traffic to the Best Buy site was "comparable to the type of volumes we see in holiday and Boxing Day."
She declined to give numbers for the amount of traffic the sites experienced.
DeCou speculated that because BestBuy.ca was offering 10 PS3s an hour for eight hours on Friday, people kept returning to the site in a bid to obtain the coveted console. She did not know how long the site was offline.
Just before 9 a.m. ET, FutureShop.ca flashed a notice saying it was "currently undergoing scheduled system maintenance to improve the quality and speed of your online shopping experience."
It came back up a few minutes later, but said there were no PlayStation 3s available.
Best Buy's Canadian site at BestBuy.ca was back online by 4 p.m. ET after saying it was doing maintenance for most of the day.
When the Future Shop site came back up, it offered shoppers a one-day-only deal on an alternative to the PS3. For $449, buyers could order Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360, with bonus hardware and games.
A PS3 model with a 20 gigabyte hard drive to store content costs $549.99 and a 60 GB model costs $659.99.
Full-page ads
Future Shop took out full-page ads in major newspapers before the launch, stating that stores would each have a minimum of 10 PlayStation 3 units.
But on Thursday evening, staff at a Future Shop store in Toronto said they had only eight of the machines to sell.
DeCou said the shortage was the result of a shipping error.
However, Sony is expected to push shipments into North America before Christmas, the top season for retailers.
The total Canadian allocation could be as few as 32,000 units, out of a total of 400,000 that are supposed to be available in North America, a Sony Computer Entertainment Canada spokesman said.
PS3 buyers shot, threatened
Ottawa police arrested a man on Thursday night after an altercation in a lineup for the PS3. He was charged with public intoxication.
Police said those involved were not permitted to rejoin the line.
Elsewhere, two gunman in Putnam, Conn., tried to rob fans who had lined up to buy the consoles early Friday.
About 3 a.m., the thugs shot a buyer in front of a Wal-Mart store after the patron refused to hand over money.
The gunmen fled and the victim was taken to hospital, a police spokesman said. The victim's condition is not known.
In West Bend, Wis., a 19-year-old man was hurt racing others for one of 10 spots to buy a console outside a Wal-Mart.
At a Best Buy in Boston, employees gave out tickets to the first 140 people in line, entitling them to one of the 140 consoles it had.
With files from the Associated PressRelated
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