Amazon.com pulled some shenanigans with the Wii on Sunday, angering a lot of gamers who had camped out on Amazon's Wii order page from Saturday night until Sunday afternoon, hitting refresh every couple of seconds. Amazon had previously touted (via the order page) that the Wii would be available for purchase on the site, sometime on Sunday, and that news spread like wildfire, especially amongst those who wanted to wait in the comfort of their own home, not on a curb somewhere.

However, by failing to provide a time they left a lot of buyers in the lurch, strike one. If you had previously registered on the page, you were told that you would receive an email as soon as they had more information about when the Wii would go on sale. Did anyone ever get that email? We sure didn't. Strike two. They eventually put up a notice that states, "We are currently out of stock: We sold out of our initial supply of the Wii on Sunday morning, November 19, in less than one minute." Yer out.

First came the debacle over "accidental" pre-orders in October, and now this. While folks were waiting on Sunday, the "user reviews" section became a forum of sorts, with people swapping alternatives for scoring a Wii, like brick and mortar stores and other websites. It grew to over 700 comments before Amazon finally shut it down and scaled it back to just reviews about the system.

Anyone actually able to score one during the one minute sale? We hope that with lightning fast gamer reflexes, you'd have the drop on regular Amazon shoppers.

U.K. online retailer Play.com has made the PS3 available for pre-order in a bundle with three games, pushing the price up to £549.99 which, for a game console, is very near the "I'd have to sell my soul to get one" boundary. The real cheek is that the company doesn't guarantee that they'll be able to ship the console to you before Christmas "due to an expected European shortage of the PS3." On top of that, the three game bundle of Formula One '06, Warhawk and Singstar "may be changed, subject to availability."

We realize that these kind of bundles and disclaimers are the norm with console pre-orders, but if you convert this figure to dollars ($1,019.73) and compare it to similar deals for the Xbox 360 that we previously considered outrageous ($1,200 got you an Xbox 360 with 11 games and several accessories not too long ago), you get a good perspective on the difficult situation that Sony has put itself into by setting such a high sticker price. If the first pre-order bundle in the UK comes in at over half a grand, what can we expect from retailers in the weeks before the launch? I really don't want to be forced to sell my little sister's soul too.

[Via T3]