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KAI RYSSDAL: Here’s today’s sign the consumer apocalypse is upon us. CompUSA says it’ll open up Thanksgiving night from 9 to midnight. It’s not satisfied opening at 5 Friday morning will give it a big enough edge, I guess.

One item that’s already flying off store shelves is Sony’s PlayStation 3. It came out today — midnight, actually. There are reports of people being shot over the game console.

Jeff Gerstmann is a senior editor with GameSpot. He says Sony’s taking a big bet on the PS3:

JEFF GERSTMANN: It touches every single part of the Sony organization. It’ll play Blu-ray movies, so of course you’ve got Sony Pictures wanting to make sure that they can get a piece of the living room with the PlayStation 3. It’s got a whole online store, so the potential for kind of going after something like Apple and iTunes, and so Sony’s record labels are in on it.

Sony could sure use a home run. It had to deal with that big battery recall earlier this year which took a chunk out of its bottom line.