WiiPreorders Begin in Japan("I've never seen anything like this,")wii winning ?

dari 1up.com

What a difference two years makes. Back on November 3, 2004, Nintendo started taking preorders for their upcoming Nintendo DS handheld in Japan. I remember the morning very clearly - 1UP contributor Jonathan Lumb and myself were the first two people who showed up to Shibuya Tsutaya to plunk down our preorders when the store opened its doors. There wasn't much excitement in the air, and apart from us, only a few others showed up before we took off. Easy in, easy out. Same goes for launch day - we showed up on Dec. 2 expecting big lines outside the store, only to find about three lonely-looking dudes and a pair of elderly folks waiting there to buy their DS systems.

Fast-forward 24 months (and six days) to today, the first morning of Nintendo Wii preorders. DS Lite is the hottest thing in Japan, there's a huge buzz over the upcoming Wii console, and Nintendo is generally dominating the charts. With this in mind, I figured I'd play it safe and meet up with a friend at Tsutaya around 7:30am. Surely we'd be the first ones there, right? Wrong. When we got there, 20 people were already in line ahead of us. By the time 9am rolled around, there were an additional 70 or so behind us. And at 10am when the store officially opened, the number was close to 150. This is not launch morning, remember - this is just "walk up to the register, write down your name and get a little slip of paper" morning. Walking out the door after the deed was done, there was at least another 20 or 30 people in line from when we went in.

Needless to say, Nintendo fever is in full effect here in Japan. If they can generate this kind of demand just for preorders, we can only imagine the hysteria that's going to be taking place come launch day. Fortunately, we've got our preorder locked down - now we just have to deal with the grueling 3 1/2 week wait.

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As this is being written, it's just after 9:00 am in Tokyo and over 100 people are lined up outside of the Tsutaya music/game/dvd store in the district of Shibuya. No, there's no celebrity DVD signing or AAA CD release - people lined up to preorder the Nintendo Wii after word leaked that preorders would begin this morning.

Lines are common for major game and console releases in Japan, but not for preorders. "I've never seen anything like this," said our correspondent John Ricciardi, currently in line.

If there's any indication that Japanese gamers are excited for the Wii, this is it.

Wii will rocks you.....the dead of SONY PS3
credit mercurial VGI