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The Wii Launches in Japan
The Wii has launched in Japan, successfully and without many of the incidents associated with the PlayStation 3 launch. Joystiq's coverage of the Wii's painless Nippon birth has nothing but praise for the crowd control efforts of electronics outlets. The talk is entirely of sellouts and happy gamers. From the article: "Numerous methods of retail were used to launch the Wii, and these varied from store to store. Yodobashi kept its customers camped overnight in a parking lot, distributing numbered tickets to determine the order of entrance, before opening its doors at 7am. Bic Camera also opened at 7am, although most of the 650 people in line there didn't arrive until the first trains of the morning began to run at around 5am. Famitsu reports that the Tokyo Ikebukuro branch of Bic Camera sold out if its allocation of 1,200 units, while the Tokyo Yuuraku-cho arm of Bic Camera declared the console "sold out" at 5.41am when the 1,500th person arrived in the queue there." Kotaku has even more extensive coverage, with plenty of photos of the waiting lines.
If only I lived in japan -_-. Anyone else see their VC launch list and feel jealous? They get: Zelda 3, Super Mario Bros and World and we get: Baseball for NES. WOooooooooooOOooOOo Those games arent even coming to the US 2007.
Dooom
They said they could not keep up with Sony and Microsoft for technology a few years ago. There was even talk of them becoming software only. Yet here they are, focussed on gameplay and fun, and doing brilliantly. And of the big 3 they are the only ones makign a profit.
You have to admire that.
1000s Warcraft Gold while you sleep
over 1 million units, they currently are at 1.1 mio units sold according to http://www.nexgenwars.com/ and by the end of next week they will hit the 2 mio marks, because the rollouts in europe and Australia are still to be done.
And Europe alone will count for 600.000 while Europe is not that Nintendo crazy, I do not expect lines as long as in Japan or the USA, it still will sellout within the first day, I assume.
The reason why Europe is not as Nintendo crazy as the rest is easily explained, they usually charge the highest prices while often if not always are the last to get the releases. Big vendors do not push Nintendo too much over here due to many reasons (the average ds corner in the big stores over here in central europe is more like ok we have it too, but we want to sell PSPs). Or to some it up in other words, Nintendo Europe is a bunch of morons who really should get their act together, the same goes for Apple Europe!
Assuming all of the allocated units were sold, the Wii will probably sell more units than the DS Lite this week. That would end the 39 week string of the DS Lite at the top of the Japanese weekly hardware sales charts, which it has held since its launch in March.
Who would have guessed that Nintendo would have to dethrone itself...
I got my Wii pre-ordered but went to the store (in a decent sized city in rural Japan -- allocation was 40 consoles + pre-orders, everyone in line got one). Fully half of the people lined up were of the fairer sex. Some were there with their boyfriends, there were a lot of families with the kids in toe, and at least two groups of high school girls were getting Wiis for themselves.
The launch was, incidentally, as smooth as silk. 45 minutes before the door opened they gave everyone in line a "you are guaranteed to get a Wii when we open, no need to rush" ticket. There were only about 20 people in the store when I picked mine up, most browsing the Nintendo sections while two queues proceeded in a very orderly manner.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.