Wii Launched in Japan

3,000 Held at 12th Floor Car Park as Wii Fever Hits Japan

Posted by Staff
Now, remind me again just why I am queing for these videogames?
Now, remind me again just why I am queing for these videogames?
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Nintendo finally made its Wii available in Japan today, and SPOnG was in Osaka to get a taste of the action. We arrived (without a pre-order) at the huge, 12-storey Yodobashi Camera store in Umeda, Osaka, at 9pm yesterday evening. There was no queue outside the building, yet the games department on the fifth floor was full of shoppers who were clearly impressed with the Wii display area that had been set out in preparation for today’s launch.

We asked a Yodobashi staffer what the procedure for launch was, and he discreetly explained that we should go to the side entrance of the store, where we could collect a ticket from a man holding a Wii sign, and then take the lift to the car park on the 12th floor. The ticket we received was number 593. We made our way to the 12th floor and found the 592 people before us already waiting there, but not in any particular order.

Some of the people we spoke to had been there since 6pm. At 10pm an announcement was made over the PA system: “You may not leave this floor until 12.30pm. Between 12.30pm and 4am you will be permitted briefly to leave the premises, but failure to return in time will exclude you from the procedure.”

By 11pm, however, latecomers were still entering. The numbers on their tickets were now around the 1600 mark. We tuned in to Pictochat on our DS – there were 20 other Pictochatters in the vicinity, and most of them were complaining about the cold while a few were bemoaning the queue for the toilets. (Although the queue for a Wii eventually stretched to 2,800 people, there were constantly around 50 people in the queue for a wee.) It was amazing to see how many people had DS Lites – around a quarter of everyone there, we reckon – and it was even better to see people enjoying class titles such as Ouendan, Mario Kart and Jump Ultimate Stars. Unlike the scalper-heavy PS3 launch a few weeks ago, this was a console launch attended mostly by genuine gamers.

At 12.30pm, as the number of ticket holders increased towards 3,000, Yodobashi’s security guards at last allowed us out into the open; there was a rush in the direction of the exit, but as there were only two lifts that could take people to the ground floor, a queue of more than 1,000 would-be escapees quickly formed. Fortunately, we were near the front and managed to escape in good time for a trip to the warm, seated environment of First Kitchen, a local burger joint.

We returned to the car park scene, which looked like some makeshift government provision for a post-disaster scenario, at 3am. It wasn’t until 4am that we were called, in blocks of 100, to form a real queue.

The whole thing was gearing towards a 7am start; it took a couple of hours just to arrange everyone in the correct order – from 1 to 2,800. The man sat next to us had a Nintendo employee friend, and he gave us some inside info: last week NCL staffers were allowed to buy one Wii each, and almost all of them did.

We also spoke with a guy who wasn’t a gamer, but was here to get a Wii for his young kids. “I really think they’re going to love the tennis game,” he explained to us. We commended him on being a good father.

Eventually, at 7.35am, people with tickets numbered between 501 and 600 (i.e. SPOnG) were called to take the lift down to floor five. There were eight checkouts, and staff behind the checkout operators fetched all the stock as per customers’ requests. It was an impressive show of Japanese efficiency – the process was remarkably quick and customers were satisfied.

Although we did see a few people buy consoles without software – they gave off a whiff of online auction opportunism – the great majority bought games (note the plural) with their hardware. The most popular titles seemed to be Zelda (unsurprisingly), Wii Sports (not included as standard with the Japanese version of the Wii), and Hajimete no Wii (which includes a spare Wiimote, and only retails Y1,000 above a standalone Wiimote).

Want to know what we got? By the magic of a Yodobashi store card, and thanks to slightly discounted prices at Yodobashi (Wii Sports was only Y4,120, when most places were selling it for Y4,800), we splashed out Y39,560 (which is about £173) on: a Wii (clever us), Hajimete no Wii (largely for a second Wiimote), Wii Sports, Odoru! Made in Wario, Monkey Ball Banana Blitz, and component cables for the Big Telly.

400,00 Wiis On Sale
There were 400,000 Wiis on sale in Japan this morning – 2,800 of them were sold at Yodobashi Umeda. And by 8.15am, there was a guy with a megaphone standing outside Yodobashi to blare “Nintendo Wii, SOLD OUT! SOLD OUT!”

It seems to have been a perfectly executed console launch, and everyone is happy - which should prove to Sony that such things are, in fact, possible. We talked with some friendly Wii owners as soon as they’d been given their receipts: see the results right here and here.

Comments

majin dboy 3 Dec 2006 01:38
1/1
nice article,caputured everything.i cud almost feel the que.lol
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