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.

Re:wow

[Nemetroid]

6.5% (estimation from 2000 numbers) of the US population lives in New York and about 3% in New York City. Assuming that Times Square actually Toys'R Us got 3000, that's reasonable since it's a very central location. 1200 was in just one store, not necessarily the hugest one either.

Re:Have to respect Nintendo

[Akaihiryuu]

Yes...they've only had one quarter EVER where they posted a loss, and that loss was due to some bad investments overseas when the value of the yen dropped, and they got screwed on the currency exchange.

Re:Jipped.

[Telvin_3d]

Actually, the impression that I got wasn't that they were holding it for weeks with poor Wii releases, but weeks were they would have otherwise poor VC releases. They are planning on releasing 1-5 new VC games every week. Most weeks this is going to be a couple B list titles and one or two C list titles. Every month or two, they will release one of the A list titles (SMB, etc..) instead.

From the point of view of giving everyone their favourite game right away, not the best. From the point of view of building constant attention and interest in the VC, I think it is the right way to go. Every Monday, everyone is going to be waiting to see what goes up this week. Some people will grab a game, play it for a week and then grab something from the next Mondays offering.

Not Wrong

[LKM]

It seems to probably be true. It was a big deal [gamesarefun.com] when it happened, and every news site reported it as the first ever loss for Nintendo "since going public in 1962."

Re:DS + Wii?

[masklinn]

The first Wii game using the Wii-DS connectivity should be Pokemon Battle Revolution, with links to the DS' Pokemon Diamond and Pokemon Pearl games. I don't know how the DS' will be used though, probably just to get your pokemons into BR

Re:DS + Wii?

[oniboy]

I just woke up & put on the teli & the first thing I saw was an add for Pokemon Battle Revolution. It showed the DS being used to play the game with the Wii. Its due out here in Japan on the 14th. Heres a couple of links for you, sorry only in Japanese ( which I cant read well myself ). http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/game/docs/20061117/ poke.htm [impress.co.jp] (lost of screen shots) http://www.pokemon.co.jp/game/wii/pbr_sp/ [pokemon.co.jp]

Re:Have to respect Nintendo

[edwdig]

Actually, the value of the yen went up. It was the US Dollar that dropped. They invest their profits in the country they are earned in, but report results in yen. Without the dollar bombing, they actually would've had a rather successful quarter.

Re:Have to respect Nintendo

[edwdig]

Nintendo's profitability comes from two things:

1) They don't sell anything at a loss.

2) They rely primarily on first party games. The entire profit of a first party game goes to Nintendo. Sony and Microsoft rely mainly on 3rd party games, of which they get around $8 per sale (and less on budget games).

Nintendo being massively profitable means they make really good games that sell a lot.