and All Consoles

After Nintendo finished in last place during the last “console war” with its GameCube, when the PlayStation 2 finishing in first place, followed by the Xbox in second, Nintendo is looking to rebound and regain its place as the number one console maker in the world. With the Nintendo Wii there is definitely a good chance of reclaiming this status. The initial launch success of a console system does not always determine the overall success of the console, but is does surely start to answer many questions.

The first announcement of the Nintendo Wii was at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in 2005. Little information was known about the console at that time, but Nintendo made it very clear that they intended to stay in the console system wars for some time to come. This came after much speculation that Nintendo would drop out of any future console making to focus all its attention and resources on its extremely successful new handheld, the DS. Fast-forward a year to E3 2006. Nintendo surprised the gaming world by unveiling a playable Wii for the first time. The new controllers were also revealed and Nintendo stole and show. The countdown to the Wii commencing after the launch date and price were unveiled. North America was going to be the first place in the world to get their hands on the Nintendo Wii consoles, closely followed by Japan and later by Europe.

The official North American launch party was held at the Toys R Us store in Times Square, a few blocks down from the Nintendo World store in New York City. It was estimated that at least 10,000 of the Wii consoles would be available at Toys R Us. With the Nintendo World store holding onto 2,500 units available for sale. This is far cry from the official launch at Sony for its Playstation 3 which only had a few thousand units made available.

As the official launch was held at Toys R Us, they opened the doors at midnight for the highly anticipated release of the Wii. The Nintendo World store however, did not open its doors until 8am. Hundreds of die hard Nintendo fans cued outside as early as Wednesday to lay their hands on the Wii (the launch date, November 19th fell on a Sunday). Lines at the Toys R Us store were estimated to be approximately 3,000 people long, and the Nintendo World store had its own lines stretching back by over 1,000 people. It is believed that Nintendo’s Launch Night was the most successful of any other console system in history.

In view of the extremely high demand for the Nintendo Wii, retails such as Amazon.com saw their server’s crash when they were suddenly overloaded with customers ordering the console and its accessories. This was even after they took the wise precautions or making updates to the servers in an attempt to the meet the needs of the huge volume of shoppers.

In regard to the launch shipment numbers, Nintendo had first announced that they expected to ship 4 million Wii units worldwide by the end of 2006. However, most recent reports have estimated that number closer to 4.75 million units. This makes the release of the Sony PlayStation 3 number of only 500,000 units seems like a joke.

Although Nintendo continue with weekly shipments, this is still not enough to the quiet the demand. The shipments are still selling out immediately on their arrival on store shelves. It is expected that Nintendo will need to continue with the weekly shipment until February 2007 before things start to quiet down.

Published by Darren Lintern