The November 17, 2006 release date is fast approaching for the PlayStation 3 holiday release. With only 400,000 units available in the US, here is how to get a pre-order in.

EB Games
I shop at EB Games all the time and thought I'd have plenty of time to get a pre-order for the PS3 in here. However, what they did was send an email out to all stores saying "OK open up the floodgates" - and within a few hours they were *completely* sold out. If you didn't get into the store during those few hours, you were out of luck. Not only did you miss out on the pre-order, but you missed out, period. There will be no lines, no waiting at 6am. They will have no games other than what got pre-ordered.

The EB Games website claims that there will be an online pre-order period "coming soon". They let you sign up for the pre-order alert. However, given what happened at Amazon, your best bet is not to trust in their alert system. Instead, hit their website a few times a day to see if they have activated the pre-order ability.

EB Games PS3 Pre-Order Page

Amazon
So what DID happen with Amazon? Well, for months they had a pre-order alert sign-up. You could give them your information and get bombarded with spam, hoping that when the PS3 pre-order became available you would be alerted. However, when Amazon made the PS3 available for pre-order, they didn't alert anybody first!! Then the pre-orders came swamping in so quickly that they shut it down within an hour or two. Meaning that by the time all the emails got to people, it was too late!

Amazon claims that they were "surprised" by the influx of orders and had to turn it off until they confirmed with Sony just how many PS3s they were going to get. However, they obviously had thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of names on their alert list. Surely this would have given them a clue that demand was high! For this reason, nobody trusts Amazon's pre-order alert any more, even if (when) they do open up their pre-order ability again. Sure, sign up for the list just in case - but hit this order page a few times a day to see if you manage to see when they are actually taking orders again.

PS3 Amazon Order Page

Wal-Mart
While you might not normally buy your games at Wal-Mart, they are in fact claiming that they will let you pre-order PS3s and maybe fewer avid gamers will be hammering the Wal-Mart site, meaning you might have a slightly larger chance than normal of getting lucky and actually going to this page while the PRE-ORDER button is active. They also have a list to sign up for but, again, don't rely on lists. Rely on your own clicking and refreshing.

Wal-Mart PS3 Pre-Order Page

If you're not sure why the PS3 is going to cost so much, you really need to read about the PS3 Pricing Issues. You're getting a Blu-Ray DVD Player in this system!! If you tried to buy one of those, they go for $800 or more. So a lot of people are buying these units JUST for the Blu-Ray player, never mind that it plays games too.