Price of PlayStation 3 Tops $2,000 on EBay

NEW YORK – Videogame enthusiasts who were willing to stand on line for hours for a chance to buy a brand-new Sony PlayStation 3 at the stroke of midnight Friday were able purchase the new console for a mere $500 to $600.

For the rest of us, there's eBay.

Got $2,000?

You read right, $2,000. Eager gamers unable to find the white-hot next-gen videogame machines in their local electronics store are already bidding upwards of two grand.

The online auctions began just hours after the eagerly anticipated PS3s hit the street. Earlier in the day, at the stroke of midnight, die-hard fans mobbed stores in hopes of buying one at retail after waiting on lines — some for days — for a chance to grab Sony's boldest venture into videogaming yet.

The wait wasn't without risk, for some. Two robbers shot one man who refused to give up his money while waiting to get the system in Putnam, Conn. Some 30 miles away, another shopper was beaten up and had his brand-new PS3 stolen just moments after he bought it.

Retailers are cleaning up after midnight and morning launch events that ranged from orderly to violent. At the same time, they're gearing up for the Sunday launch of the next eagerly awaited console, Nintendo's Wii.

In Los Altos, Calif., Justin Kwong was looking at an unopened PlayStation 3 box and wondering what to do. He bought it Friday morning after three nights in a sleeping bag outside the Mountain View Best Buy.

Kwong, 19, and his sister had planned to get one each: one to sell and one to keep. But she wasn't able to buy hers because of long lines outside the stores in Los Angeles, where she lives. Kwong was now waiting to get in touch with her to decide what to do with the one he got.

"Me personally, I've seen what they're going for ... so I'm thinking probably of selling, because it's such a large profit margin," he said.

Sergio Deynes, 26, who camped out at a Best Buy in New York since Monday, said the people with him at the front of the line were "beautiful."

"It was the people in the back who were desperate who messed things up for a lot of us," Deynes said.

His cousin, who camped with Deynes, immediately sold his PS3 for $2,500. Deynes is keeping his, however.

"Hearing all these numbers definitely made me very conflicted," Deynes said, but "thinking of all that I went through, I'm not getting rid of this thing ... Last night the rain messed up our tents and we got soaked and we had to sleep in the freezing cold."

Deynes said he had two thoughts in his head: "Man, I could go to sleep, or I could play this for a little bit."

The Sunday launch of Nintendo's Wii is expected be less dramatic than the PS3 launch, because Nintendo will have about 10 times as many units available as Sony.

Nintendo's fan base is also smaller. It sold 21 million units of its previous console, the GameCube, compared to 110 million for Sony's PlayStation 2. But it's quite possible that the Wii could grab some market share from Sony with its family-friendly games, $250 price tag and innovative motion-sensing controller.

FOXNews.com's Jesse Zanger and The Associated Press contributed to this report