Wii Launches, Sells Out Peacefully

porcupine8 writes "Like the Playstation 3, the Nintendo Wii sold out on launch day this weekend. Unlike the PS3, the launch was a peaceful affair with no reports yet of console-related violence in the US. This may be partially due to the fact that Nintendo promises to have a total of four million units in stores by Christmas, with the bulk of those going to North America. Midnight launch parties on both the east and west coasts ushered the new console in with a bang." Please, if you've managed to snag a Wii yourself, share your opinions below! Update: 11/20 17:25 GMT by Z : A few quick impressions from 24 hours of owning a Wii, and some links on the subject if you Read More.

All I have to say so far is pretty positive. I snagged Rayman Raving Rabbids, Zelda, and (on a lark) Red Steel. I haven't had the heart to play Red Steel yet, but Rayman is a great, quirky mini-game game. I think this format is going to be pretty common for the Wii, and I'm actually looking forward to it. Zelda is ... Zelda. I really, really like it, but if you're getting tired of the same old thing you're going to be disappointed. My big complaint is the glacially slow internet connection. I have never owned a Genesis, and so wanted to snag Sonic for some cheap laughs. Purchasing Wii points took about half an hour, and I never actually managed to download the game (despite having paid for it). I'm hoping that today, with less hammering on the servers, I'll have more luck. Expect a more complete review next week. In the mean time, Chris Kohler at Game|Life has had a Wii since last week, and has some considered opinions on its launch issues, and a bit more specifically on virtual console problems.

That just means...

[by Anonymous Coward]

That Wii gamers are peace-loving pansies, and PS3 users are bad-ass tough guys.

Therefore PS3 games will be cooler.

-PS3 fanboy, loal x 3

Re:That just means...

[rlbond86 (874974)]

or PS3 users just don't realize they're getting ripped off -Only spent $250 on his console

xkcd

[TheRagingTowel (724266)]

This one nailed it: Console Lines [xkcd.com]

console-related violence

[flyingsquid (813711)]

No violence? Yeah right. While I was waiting for a Wii someone actually jumped on my head. As if that wasn't enough, he then threw a turtle shell at me.

Re:console-related violence

[sammy baby (14909)]

Hey asshole, I'm the guy who jumped on your head. You want to know what sucked most of all?

When I finally got to the front of the line, there was a sign that said, "We've sold out of Wiis, try another castle."

Long queues reported for a Wii...

[phase_9 (909592)]

And there was me thinking it was just women who suffered from this social problem... :P

Local Gamestore Figures

[Shadow Wrought (586631)]

Wii: 50 units
PS3: 1 unit

The question that's coming in the spring, when the PS3 might actually be available in quantity, is what kind of demand will exist once all the hardcore types already have theirs.

Why a Christmas Launch?

[stealie72 (246899)]

If Nintendo really can have 4 million Wiis in stores by christmas, a late november launch makes sense, but in the case of the PS3, why did they release this late when they know full well they won't even begin to meet demand for christmas?

Christmas buyers aren't your hard core fanboys who will wait in line to buy the thing, so why not launch it in the summer, get the fanboys set, then work hard to produce enough of your system to keep in in stock for christmas buyers (you know, like MS did). Sony made a major error here, in that lots moms and dads buying the system for their kids are going to wait a full year till next christmas to do so. Meanwhile, Nintendo has Wiis in stock, for 1/2 the price, ready to be snatched up by Santa.

Re:Why a Christmas Launch?

[eebra82 (907996)]

It's not like Sony wanted to release the console this late. It was initially delayed because of problems with the Cell processor and the Blu-ray readers. This is also why there aren't that many units available for sale.

It has its very own

[sa1lnr (669048)]

form of violence. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?s= &threadid=2183346 [somethingawful.com]

financial incentives

[theMerovingian (722983)]

That's because the robbers make roughly 60% less money for each unit of felonious prison sentence.

No way would I go to jail for 10-25 years just to make $250. But, for $600 it starts to look more attractive.

my launch experience

[focitrixilous P (690813)]

I bought a Wii at launch at 8 am at a local Target. I got there around 1 am, and was 10th in line. The store had said they had 20-30 units earlier that day, but refused to give a full count. We played some frisbee, security yelled at a couple high school kids for shopping cart jousting, Mario Kart DS was played until everyones hands were nearly frozen off (It was around 15 degrees F) and then everyone sat around until 7:30, when they handed out tickets and popcorn and soda (nothing like a cold diet coke after 7 hours in th e cold. They didn't have enough for everyone in the line, but a bunch of people had gotten there around 7 am so they weren't that dissapointed. Bought my unit and a Wiimote + Nunchuck, I'm going to leech Zelda off of one of the 3 people I know that bought it in a couple weeks. I was waiting for more reviews of games, I might actually buy Madden 07 (first madden game in 6 years, finally changed enough to justify it.)

Wii Bowling so far has been the most popular Wii Sport, with Boxing/Golf also being played often. Bowling's Power Shot training mode, where an additional row of pins is added each frame, leading to a final frame of 91 pins, has been played a lot.

First system I've gotten on Opening Day, thus far I think it was worth it.

Wiilief

[Puff of Logic (895805)]

I'm just glad to see some positive press coverage of gaming for once. In terms of friendliness, camaraderie, and just plain fun, the Wii launch stood in stark contrast to the PS3 debacle. I commented some time ago in a thread that I'm a fairly hardcore PC gamer but the Wii was enough to make me consider a foray into console gaming. This launch has only solidified that temptation.

Good work, Nintendo

Stop calling /. editors Wii fanboys

[A beautiful mind (821714)]

You don't know what is a fanboy until you read this:

The first buyer, Isaiah Triforce Johnson, had been waiting outside the store for more than a week. He wore a Nintendo Power Glove, a wearable controller that came out in 1989, while shaking hands with Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime. Johnson said he had legally changed his name to include a reference to Nintendo's "Zelda" series of games.

Technical Specs?

[BenjyD (316700)]

Now that the Wii has been released, has anyone found any more technical details (CPU etc.) about it? I know it's not about the graphics, but I'd like to know a bit more about what it's capable of.

My walmart story!

[AsnFkr (545033)]

Got to Walmart @ 2:30pm. Was #17 out of 20 in line. My friend Chip was #13. #8-12 was a family (father, mother, 2 sons and a daughter) all in line. They had done a few days in line earlier this week and gotten three PS3's. They were really really nice people. At 8pm walmart handed out 20 vouchers and once we had them a few of us went to Bob Evans for some dinner. Back to Walmart and at 10 they let us inside to get warm. That was nice of Walmart. At 11:45 these two doofy looking guys come up and offer $500 for a VOUCHER. No Wii, just a VOUCHER. The family in front of us took them up on the offer and also sold the doofy guys a PS3 they had for $1800. Got my Wii, headed home. Also, it is amazing.

Re:As I expected

[MyDixieWrecked (548719)]

depends on how you define shortage.

I'm sure no one camped out for a week for the Wii (like so many did for the PS3), although many camped out for around 20+ hours.

I got up at 5am on sunday morning and my friend picked me up and we were going to go to bestbuy, but there were around 200 people in line outside, then we went to another bestbuy where there were at least 100 people in line. A nearby target had an enormous crowd outside, too.

We finally went to a slightly hidden Circuit city where there were 21 people waiting and we got in line. After talking to the guys there, we learned that the store had 16 units physically at the store and were expecting a *possible* shipment of 15 more at 7am, and we'd find out at that time. Since we really didn't know where else to go at that time, we decided to stick it out.

The couple of guys immediately in front of us were there for only about 20 minutes when we arrived (at about 5:30) and the guys in front of them got there at midnight. The group of guys at the head of the line were there since 8am the day before and had sleeping bags and a tent.

It's kinda funny because several people came and went in those early hours (the store was gonna open at 10) but since it wasn't a sure thing, no one really wanted to stick it out to find out if those extra 15 units were going to show up, so until about 9:30 (the truck had gotten a flat and hadn't shown up yet) there were only about 10 people behind us... it wasn't until about then that suddenly people were showing up left and right.

and AT 10, a couple of people showed up thinking they'd avoid the crowd and get there when they first open to pick their wii up. they were a little shocked that people were waiting outside. they didn't understand.

heh.

but I got one!! and it's AWESOME.

red steel sucks, though.

People

[suso (153703)]

It could be that the price of the units make them more of a commonity. Some people might have been counting on selling the units at a 400% profit and when they couldn't, getting pretty angry. $250 profit is a lot less than $2000.

It might also have nothing to do with money and more to do with personality and character. PS3's and Wii's probably attract different kinds of people, but each attract a certain type of person. Back in the 90s I did a study of people using browsers by first blocking IE and allowing Netscape users in, allowing that to happen for a couple months and then switching it around so that Netscape users where blocked and IE users where allowed in. The site was a fan site for a musician and so people visiting had a strong desire to see the content. In each case, when I blocked a certain browser, I would receive angry emails from the people that were blocked. Maybe about 25-50 for each browser. I found that IE users on average would use poor grammar, make more spelling mistakes and generally shorter words than Netscape users. I also found that most Netscape users would send longer emails while several IE users would be very short and frank with me. The same effect is most likely the case with gaming consoles, computers, operating systems and everything else.

Re:Resell

[revlayle (964221)]

Not sure, but Red Steel has had lackluster reviews on gameplay and the dev-team always had some issues with the control - i.e. the small targeting "reticle" (i.e. once the remote moves out of this small reticle, the player turns). Your sensor bar may be fine, the game may just suck :)

Re:Resell

[by Anonymous Coward]

I found out something good and geek-worthdy about the wii.

There is a way to set the sensor bar sensitivity in the root of the main menu, before the channels.

The interesting thing is that it shows you a PIXEL DUMP of the infrafed camera in the wiimote.
that camera looks at the 2 IR LEDS in the sensor bar.

If you see more than 2 light dots on the raw pixel dump, you can adjust the sensitivity with
a 5 level slider.

You can play with this by passing a refrective surface near the bar and you will see where it registers
on the wiimote-mounted camera-sensor. (you can also deduce it's resolution).

Re:Resell

[jimstapleton (999106)]

I thought Nintendo was taking a profit on the Wii while Sony was taking a loss on the PS3... So that would mean Nintendo needs to sell one to beat Sony, it Sony sells none, and doesn't need to sell any if Sony sells one.

That is if you ignore the profit from game sales, and look only at console sales.

Of course "day 1" is a sellout...

[xxxJonBoyxxx (565205)]

Of course "day 1" is a sellout...this is one of the oldest marketing tricks in the book.

If they made 1M units available on day 1 and only 50% sold, the headline would be: "Plenty of Product X left after first day (expect discounts soon)"

However, when they make 100K units available on day 1 and all sell in a few hours, the headline is "Product X sells out first day (don't expect a discount soon)"

The whole point is to create a buyers frenzy and match it with artificial supply constraints to ensure everyone pays full price or more, all while getting free press from Slashdot and other media whores with lazy editors...

Re:Wii Launch Not Going Very Well

[HappySqurriel (1010623)]

Third, Wii games are getting slammed in reviews. Even their main system seller game is getting so fairly negative reactions and reviews.

Yeah its only the best reviewed game of the year with an average review score of 97% after 16 reviews (gamerankings.com); if it can maintain that average over 4 more reviews it will only be the second best reviewed game of all time (second only to The Legend of Zelda:OoT).

Second, the Wii appears to be having huge numbers of problems. Not the insane failure rate/dead consoles fiasco Microsoft had with the 360s, but huge numbers of minor to medium problems. Dead/flakey controllers seem to be very common, networking problems, disc read errors, problems updating the Wii software, and a fair number of DOA Wiis.

Link?

First the number of consoles actually shipped to NA appears to be dramatically lower than promised. Nintendo gave out new estimates for NA shipment plans for up to middle of January and they sound about half of what was promised. Only about 2 million units instead of 4. The massive lead in sales people thought Nintendo would have over Sony doesn't look like it will happen with Sony at 400k with the initial shipment and 600k in the process of being air shipped by Christmas. Nintendo appears to be around 800 from estimates so far. Nowhere near the massive installed base advantage they were hoping for.

First off, Link?

Secondly, every store I called on Friday/Saturday (to determine where I needed to go to get my Wii) had between 3 to 8 times as many Wiis as they had PS3s (with a guestimated average of 4 times as many units); the lowest ratio of Wii to PS3 was at the store I went to which had 5 PS3s and 15 Wii. I could see that my city being a little disproportionate, but if the PS3 sold 400,000 systems I expect that Nintendo had (at least) 1.2 Million.

I have however heard the PS3 undersupplied, which would make sense if Nintendo Shipped 1 Million Wii and the PS3 only had 250,000 units shipped.

Re:Linux

[flooey (695860)]

What CPU does it use? Another Power-based from IBM?

Not really related, but I was looking at how the hardware designers came together for the current and last generation of consoles, and it was pretty interesting.

Sixth generation:

PS2: Sony/Toshiba CPU + Sony GPU
GameCube: IBM CPU + ATI GPU
Xbox: Intel CPU + NVIDIA GPU

Seventh generation:

PS3: IBM CPU + NVIDIA GPU
Wii: IBM CPU + ATI GPU
Xbox 360: IBM CPU + ATI GPU

Re:Internet connection issues?

[Jarlsberg (643324)]

But since it's Nintendo, even connection errors is really FUN, aren't they? ;P