A local Wal-Mart 'round these here parts already has a handful of people in line, too. It's...it's not exactly warm up here. Insane, just insane. I know someone whose wife is a manager at another local one, a bigger one, and what he told me seems to confirm that Wal-Marts getting single-digit allotments seems to be the norm.
Were I to actually have any compassion for these soulless and lifeless cretins, I would actually fear for them. They're going to probably want presidential-caliber security just to get back to their cars. Then, they've got to make sure they're not getting followed home. This is especially true for those at Midnight Launch. I really feel that more than just a couple people are going to get hurt in the next couple days. And hurt badly.
It's so much more intense than the 360 because casual eBayers and geeks alike 'learned their lesson' last year. Also, whether the reality of it or just perception (and perception is often reality, as it turns out), many of these people think the PS3 is exponentially more desirable/powerful than any Microsoft console, so they create a self-fulfilling prophecy. The stakes are ionosphere-high.
How is getting your 'pay day' ganked from you after waiting three straight days in the cold going to taste, hunh, bitches? Or how about getting your new toy home after that and finding out it's defective and that you're going to have to wait another two weeks...or more?