The PS3 madness continues

If you thought the PlayStation 3 frenzy ended at midnight, you were terribly mistaken. It was just warming up.

After finding very few fans planning to keep their purchased PS3 for themselves at yesterday's launch, it was to be expected that more drama would ensue today. This morning, the world awoke to next-gen consoles auctioning for obscenely high prices and very few places to buy or even place an order for one.

Costco's Web site was down this morning, though now it shows just an empty crate and a "sold out" banner. CircuitCity.com reports it is "sold out!" of its PS3 stash, and Wal-Mart's site lists it as "out of stock."

Seven hundred PS3s went out the door at the SonyStyle store in San Francisco Thursday night, and 698 of those were 60GB versions, according to a Sony Computer Entertainment America spokesperson. The most popular title sold was Resistance: Fall of Man.

The Sony units were being advertised on the San Francisco Bay Area Craigslist with asking prices ranging from $1,500 and $4,000. But the blogosphere was agog Friday morning with reports of a single 60GB system receiving a bid of $9,000. No, that's not a typo, it really does say $9,000 is being offered for a video game unit originally sold for $600. But something seems, well, not quite right. The bidding jumped from $3,500, which seems to be about the standard selling price right now, straight to $8,000. You do the math.