After the amazing spectacle of the PS3,s launch on Friday comes the second wave for next gen game console fans with the debut of Nintendo,s Wii on Sunday. Over 1,500 hopefuls camped out the night before in order to secure a spot in line at the Toys ‘R’ Us flagship store in New York City’s Times Square. Over on the West Coast, 500 shoppers gathered outside the GameStop store at the Universal City Walk located in Hollywood, California for a chance to buy the next gen console from Nintendo, according to Reuters.
While there were thousands of people across the nation that were willing to brave the elements by standing in the cold for a Wii machine, others preferred to take their chances by doing it in the comforts of their homes through “e-camping” on store websites to order their machines. Toys R Us and Circuit City had their allotments of Wiis vanish within a few minutes of availability as hungry shoppers snapped them up in record time.
Amazon.com, which sent out emails to customers informing them that they would sell the Wii “sometime in the morning” on Sunday, produced a wildfire of speculation on when the Wii ordering would get underway. E-campers on Amazon tapped their computer,s refresh button hoping to see the Wii come up for purchase, but were disappointed at an expected midnight launch for Nintendo,s new game console. After 1AM, it was apparent to many that there would not be a release of the machine until later.
Hundreds of angry messages on the Amazon.com forum berated the company for not selling the Wiis soon enough and being so nebulous in stating the time for the sale. Some customers swore never to shop at Amazon again because of their frustration. However, the Wiis finally did go on sale at 8AM PST. The first batch was gone within seconds of launch, to the consternation of all-night e-campers who stayed awake from midnight till 7AM and finally retired to bed from exhaustion. Reports from customers of Amazon.com said that it took nearly 30 minutes to finalize their orders.
However, at press time, there were no reports of Wii-related shootings.
