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.

Comments

Re:wow

[Ninjaesque One]

The Times Square Toys'R Us got 3,000 PS3's in the launch.

Didn't stop it from selling out a day before, though.

Re:wow

[the dark hero]

Please remember that Japan is a much smaller country than the U.S. Just about everything they do (in the city) is done in high values. http://www.isop.ucla.edu/eas/japan/geography/japan -us-size.gif

Bullshit

[SinGunner]

I was at Yodobashi Camera Friday night. First, they wouldn't allow us to line up prior to 8PM, which meant at 8PM, there were 200 people waiting to go down to the basement level 4 just milling around in front of the elevators. So at 8, they decide only one elevator will be allowed and everyone rushes it. Then, they say we can't use that because we're crushing eachother and knocking over displays to get at the elevator. I was at the front cause I had gotten there so early, and now I was at the back because they wanted us to use the escalators behind us. Putting now 500 people down 4 flights of escalators, but trying to keep them in groups at the very bottom: NOT A FUCKING GOOD IDEA. The tiny room before we were allowed to get to B4 was so full that people were trying to walk backwards up the escalator to keep from smashing into everyone else, and resultantly smashing into the the other 500 people coming down, with no communication to the top to stop allowing people. Fucking idiots. It was the biggest failure of management I've ever seen, and I'm American. SOOO, we have 1500 people sitting in the basement, barely room between us, trying to get to the bathroom and whatnot for 4 hours. Then they hand out tickets, starting with the "assumed" front of the line. Mine was number 468, which tells you what happened to the real front. We're told we can leave and come back, so everybody leaves, but the hardcore people stayed until 7AM to ensure their good positioning, which was a good idea cause I showed up at 7AM, putting me about 700 back. I got my Wii quick enough, but they were running low on accessories.

SO I get my Wii, take it home and have been playing it since. It's an awesome system, but it can't tell when I'm putting a disk in it, so I have to shove it all the way in, then turn it on for it to suck it in. Then, when it spits one out, it comes ALL THE WAY OUT. I have to stand there to catch it. Then there's the fact that if the game doesn't have a "sync" function in it for the controllers, I'm fucked for getting more than one controller in the game. I tried all the things it says online and in the instruction manuals (both the Japanese and English ones (the Jap manual is scarce on tech support)). I guess I gotta work through Nintendo of Japan to get this shit taken care of. Pain in my ass, but that's what I get for getting a launch console.

BTW, Made in Wario rocks, as well as elebits. Zelda is so-so, and the sports/wiiplay are also a lot of fun. I just wish Wario had a sync function in game. Remotes changing hands isn't a huge deal, but I've got 3, so why should I have to worry about it?