NEW YORK (AP) – Days of waiting paid off for the relatively few able to buy Sony’s PlayStation 3 when the coveted console went on sale early Friday. The lucky few who got one are now struggling with some tough questions: Keep it, or sell it for a handsome profit? Play right now, or catch up on sleep lost standing in line?

Retailers, meanwhile, were cleaning up after midnight and morning launch events that ranged from orderly to violent, with one incident of gunfire. At the same time, they were gearing up for the Sunday launch of the next eagerly awaited console, Nintendo Co.’s Wii.

With shortages resulting from production problems, many had camped out for days without knowing if they’d be going home empty-handed. At some stores, the crowds got rowdy and stampeded for the shelves, injuring a man in Wisconsin and forcing authorities to shut down a Wal-Mart store in California.

In Connecticut, two armed thugs got wise to the PS3’s high price and tried to rob a line of people waiting outside a Putnam Wal-Mart store at 3 a.m. One person who refused to give up the money was shot, state police said.

In Lexington, Ky., four people waiting outside a Best Buy were hit by BB pellets, though none was seriously injured, according to WKYT, whose own reporter was hit as she interviewed buyers.

In Boston, police were called to Copley Place Mall at about 5 a.m. after the security staff was unable to control a large crowd that rushed in to buy the new gaming system from a Sony Style store that opened early, police spokesman Officer Sharon Dottin said.

There were no arrests or injuries reported. Some people who had been waiting in line for hours in the rain lost their places amid the confusion.

Elsewhere in the Boston area, gamers who waited outside stores in the city’s Fenway section and in suburban Weymouth were disappointed after the stores were ordered to open at regular times after failing to get local permits to hold special midnight sales.

With Sony promising only 400,000 systems for the nationwide launch, the chance of disappointment was high. While retailers tried to keep expectations low, lines snaked around the block at many stores – even those that weren’t going to begin sales until later Friday.

Sony, which has contended with laptop battery recalls and trails rivals in key products such as music players and liquid crystal displays, is counting on the PS3 to maintain and build its market lead in consoles.

Some customers were buying PS3 machines for themselves or as gifts, but many were hoping to resell them at a profit. Units were fetching several thousand dollars early Friday at the eBay Inc. auction site.

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.

The two PS3 models cost $500 and $600 in the stores, but were selling for between $1,000 and $3,000 on eBay on Friday, with most of them toward the higher end of the range.

But many auctions that were posted earlier in the week were withdrawn before they ended, probably because the prospective sellers were not able to obtain one of the 400,000 units available at the launch.

Short supplies and strong demand were feared to be a formula for trouble as the PS3 hit store shelves, a half-year late because of problems completing work on the console’s built-in, next-generation DVD player.

Sony promised the 400,000 machines in the United States for Friday’s launch and about 1 million by year’s end. Worldwide, it was expecting 2 million this year, half its original projections.

By contrast, Nintendo Co.’s Wii, which goes on sale Sunday in the U.S., retails for $250. Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox 360, which had a year’s head start over rivals, sells for $300 to $400.

Sony crammed the PlayStation 3 with the very latest in cutting-edge technology, and it dominated the previous generation of consoles with 70 percent of the global market.