In an attempt to obtain the desired PlayStation 3 game consoles gamers did their best to be quick enough with pre-ordering of the PS3s once it was possible to pre-order the game machines. In fact, many stores have sold out all allocated next-generation PlayStation 3 units in minutes, wires report.

“Each store had no less than 8 and no more than 13 of the anticipated next-generation players available on pre-order. In some stores they sold out in 10 minutes, in some stores hours, for others it was the afternoon,” GameStop spokesman Chris Olivera told Reuters news agency. He declined to say how may units did the GameStop network get.

Other stores reportedly also run out of allocated PlayStation 3 units. Meanwhile, some of those, who have pre-ordered the new PlayStation now sell their yet-to-be-delivered consoles for $2000 - $10 000 or even higher.

Sony Computer Entertainment America will start sales of the next-generation PlayStation 3 game console on November 17, but not all those, who desire to get one of the highly-anticipated machines, will be able to obtain the PlayStation 3, as only 400 thousand of units will be available at launch. The number is less than 500 thousand units of the PlayStation 2 that could be bought on the launch day six years ago, when Sony began to ship the PS2. Only 100 thousand PlayStation 3 units will be available at launch in Japan.

While the stores are taking pre-orders on the new consoles, it is reported that PlayStation 3 units on display at the Tokyo Game Show in late September operated erratically and had to be repeatedly reset. The main concern for Sony now is that the demo consoles crash just weeks before product launch, which may potentially delay the release or cause necessity to replace the faulty consoles eventually.

Sony PlayStation 3 console is based on the Cell processor developed by IBM, Sony and Toshiba, the RSX graphics chip by Nvidia Corp. and will be equipped with Blu-ray optical disk drive, a hardware part, which is merely available today.