'All hell broke loose' in 360 line

We've all heard tales of how scarce Xbox 360 stock currently is in Americaland, but it doesn't sound like Wal-Mart was really helping matters just after midnight on Tuesday morning when it announced that the 300-odd people queuing for a new console would be invited to buy them on a first-come, first-served basis.

According to an Associated Press report, the store manager at the Maryland Supercenter cleverly made the announcement shortly before launch, despite customers having devised some system or other of their own to stop people losing out. In scenes presumably reminiscent of that bit in Requiem for a Dream with the back of the lorry and the briefcases full of heroin [er... - Ed], customers surged forward, and some were knocked down and trampled.

"That's when all broke loose," said a chap the AP quotes of the bit when the manager made the announcement. In the end it took ten police officers to sort things out, while Wal-Mart cancelled the sale and everyone had to disperse. So, despite being trampled, nobody even got an Xbox 360 out of it.

More tales of this sort of thing when we discover more violent ones.