Originally Posted by Nintendonly Rule of thumb: Walmart employees don't know shit. I should know; I'm one of them!

Same here nintendonly, it all depends on who u talk too, i generally tell anybody i talk to about the wii u since this presale for it, get there early, because walmart and cut the preorders off at any time

Originally Posted by ch2423 Either Nintendo has struck a magical deal with Walmart or there is going to be a lot of pissed off people come late November.

I think the disconnect in the memo is when Walmart directs employees to tell the customer that their Wii U will be ready for pickup on the 18th. I have no doubt that they could probably fill all their preorders before Christmas, but I'm doubting they're going to have enough for launch day.

Then again, the last thing I read said that Nintendo was going to have 7.5mil consoles worldwide for launch. I thought it was only supposed to be 3.5. I wonder if North America is still getting 1.5mil "by the end of the year" or if that number has increased...

I am from SoCAL. Hardly any Walmarts here in Los Angeles, but I've heard this story about the Lancaster Walmart having it closed down during the Wii launch. What happened is, there were people in line in the electronics section waiting for midnight to get the Wii. during the evening, one of the employees said the line has to be outside (without organizing it to have people stay in the same order, didn't understand apparently that some of the people in line have been there for HOURS). A stampede broke loose towards the front of the store and a few people were trampled.

My assumption about Walmart(even if I do not shop there often enough) is preorders and the launch day will not be organized well as employees in Walmart aren't trained or informed enough by corporate to organize hyped up video game launches.

Originally Posted by gordojones88 NextBox720 will launch by November 2013. Wii U might have a little bit more power than PS360, but that power is being used to drive the hi-res tablet screen, so the TV graphics are pretty much the same as the current PS360. No console manufacturer can make enough consoles to meet the initial holiday demand.

are you an idiot, or did you just start following video games during the past week? what indication other than your obviously addled brain do you have that leads you to believe that microsoft will be launching its next console by next year? they've made zero announcements yet, no one has seen or heard anything about it, and the soonest you'd see a reveal would be next summer, giving everyone only a few months to hear about it.

if they were to announce their new console at next e3, the soonest it'd be released would probably be 2014.

Advertisement

Register for free to remove this ad

Originally Posted by FatherChesz I live in the middle of nowhere and on the day preorders opened for the Wii, I arrived at the Gamestop in the mall an hour before opening to be the 10th person in line. They were only accepting 20 preorders, which were filled 20 minutes before the store even opened. I walked into a slightly more remote Gamestop in the late afternoon on the day Wii U preorders opened, and had no problem securing the 32GB system. Strange.

It's amazing how much of a difference where you live can make. I lived in the middle of nowhere for the PS2 launch. Got to Walmart at 7:30PM for a midnight launch, was the 2nd person in line.

For the PS3 launch, I lived near a few colleges, and went out at 7:30PM the night before the night of the launch (with many of the stores not having midnight launches) -- i.e. 24-32 hours earlier than for the PS2, and we couldn't find a single store without a line already full.

With Wii preorders in 2006 I was in the student computer lounge on a Wednesday while my wife was in class and I got an email from gamestop indicating they were taking preorders the next day. I was at gamestop the next morning at 7 am. There was 2 people ahead of me. When store employees showed up before the store opened they had us sign a sheet in order of who was there first. By time store opened there were probably 30 people in line. I preordered mine no problem. Midnight launch was a blast...so much hype and Zelda was so worth it.

I highly doubt there will be any new console from Sony or Microsoft in 2013.
I mean cmon, the Xbox 360 has kinect...why would you need a whole new console
when you have that amazing piece of equipment.

But seriously, if there was any way a new console was going to be released by next year, we would already know and have at least seen a few games in development for it.

Originally Posted by Paladinion But seriously, if there was any way a new console was going to be released by next year, we would already know and have at least seen a few games in development for it.

Star Wars 1313 seems like it could be a candidate for release on next gen systems. There'll probably be several current gen games ported to the new systems as well, sort of like what happened with Tony Hawk's American Wasteland, Gun, & Just Cause.

Originally Posted by cakefoo http://www.joystiq.com/2006/10/29/we...dition-part-1/

Irina, the only girl in line, was the true capitalist. Huddled up to her friend Emilio (both pictured below) she said she was selling hers [PS3] on eBay, "I'll start at $600 and see where it goes." She says that $1500 - $2000 would make the evening in the cold worth it for her.

Wonder how that worked out for her.

Originally Posted by FatherChesz I live in the middle of nowhere and on the day preorders opened for the Wii, I arrived at the Gamestop in the mall an hour before opening to be the 10th person in line. They were only accepting 20 preorders, which were filled 20 minutes before the store even opened. I walked into a slightly more remote Gamestop in the late afternoon on the day Wii U preorders opened, and had no problem securing the 32GB system. Strange.

This has nothing to do with location - that's the way it was most places between the two systems. The key difference is that with the Wii, they announced a few days ahead of time when they would take preorders at Gamestop. And with the 360 launch snafu the year before, people knew they had to be there quick to get a valid (ie, day one)preorder and the resellers were out in full force. This was before the Wii got super-hyped to the general masses once it got released but it was still hyped enough with gamers and resellers that the preorders could only be obtained pretty much by lining up before stores opened.

For the Wii U, on the other hand, Nintendo announced pricing/release date one morning, and GS started taking preorders right away. Even us in the know here on CAG only had a day or two notice that Nintendo was probably going to announce the details and we still didn't know if GS would follow that up with immediate preorders or announce future ones like they did with the Wii. I was much relieved when they started them immediately and I "strolled in" around 11am and was the first person to preorder at a store that had, 6 years ago, sold out of Wii preorders before they opened. Most people didn't get wind of the availability of Wii U preorders until that evening and it wasn't until the next day that Deluxe preorders got cut off and even longer before they all did.

So, really, it was a matter of the circumstances of the announcement more than anything else which at least explains the easy first day of preorders. There was also slightly less hype for the Wii U than for the original Wii (which explains why it took a few more days for all the preorders to sell out). Though we have already seen that ramp up as people realize what it is (ie, a new Nintendo system) and I'm sure it will be as scarce as the Wii through the end of the year at least.

Originally Posted by io This has nothing to do with location - that's the way it was most places between the two systems. The key difference is that with the Wii, they announced a few days ahead of time when they would take preorders at Gamestop. And with the 360 launch snafu the year before, people knew they had to be there quick to get a valid (ie, day one)preorder and the resellers were out in full force. This was before the Wii got super-hyped to the general masses once it got released but it was still hyped enough with gamers and resellers that the preorders could only be obtained pretty much by lining up before stores opened. For the Wii U, on the other hand, Nintendo announced pricing/release date one morning, and GS started taking preorders right away. Even us in the know here on CAG only had a day or two notice that Nintendo was probably going to announce the details and we still didn't know if GS would follow that up with immediate preorders or announce future ones like they did with the Wii. I was much relieved when they started them immediately and I "strolled in" around 11am and was the first person to preorder at a store that had, 6 years ago, sold out of Wii preorders before they opened. Most people didn't get wind of the availability of Wii U preorders until that evening and it wasn't until the next day that Deluxe preorders got cut off and even longer before they all did. So, really, it was a matter of the circumstances of the announcement more than anything else which at least explains the easy first day of preorders. There was also slightly less hype for the Wii U than for the original Wii (which explains why it took a few more days for all the preorders to sell out). Though we have already seen that ramp up as people realize what it is (ie, a new Nintendo system) and I'm sure it will be as scarce as the Wii through the end of the year at least.

i pretty much did the same thing. as soon as they announced pre-orders, and the trade in bonuses for pre-ordering i went in. then the next day everyone was talking about how they had already stopped. at the time i wasn't thinking that they'd sell out so fast.

Originally Posted by Ag_SurfR i pretty much did the same thing. as soon as they announced pre-orders, and the trade in bonuses for pre-ordering i went in. then the next day everyone was talking about how they had already stopped. at the time i wasn't thinking that they'd sell out so fast.

Yep, exactly. It suprised me how easy it was to get one that first day and then again it surprised me that they sold out so quickly after it started off so slow. But that was all due to the circumstances of the Nintendo announcement in the AM followed immediately by GS taking preorders I guess. It took a full day and a half for the ball to get rolling with most people.

Originally Posted by madcatz1999 It's amazing how much of a difference where you live can make. I lived in the middle of nowhere for the PS2 launch. Got to Walmart at 7:30PM for a midnight launch, was the 2nd person in line. For the PS3 launch, I lived near a few colleges, and went out at 7:30PM the night before the night of the launch (with many of the stores not having midnight launches) -- i.e. 24-32 hours earlier than for the PS2, and we couldn't find a single store without a line already full.

Holy shit I hear you man. In my hometown the Wii was IMPOSSIBLE to get. Im at college now and Like when the Wii U preorders came up, I checked my hometown Bestbuys and EVERY single one was sold out the day they took preorders. In my college town about 4 hours north, EVERY bestbuy had them available for preorder for days.

Im actually confident I could walk in launch day and pick one up. I swear whatever Wii U's that got allocated to my bestbuy never sold out and were moved elsewhere because the lack of preorders.

When the Wii launched at home, the line was 100s of people deep, like 500 at least. My Bestbuy got 84 wiis which was ALOT considering most stores got 40 max. I camped out 14 hours and was #40. Even the size of the bestbuys is so much different, the one at my hometown is like the size of a sams club while the one up here is like the size of a a small target.

Saying nobody knew that GS would start preorders that day isn't quite true. It wasn't officially announced but it was reported as "likely" on many sites. I was at GS at 8 am before open. Was I the only one there? Yup. But technically, somebody (me) knew they'd start preorders that day.

Originally Posted by thebytewasbit With Wii preorders in 2006 I was in the student computer lounge on a Wednesday while my wife was in class and I got an email from gamestop indicating they were taking preorders the next day. I was at gamestop the next morning at 7 am. There was 2 people ahead of me. When store employees showed up before the store opened they had us sign a sheet in order of who was there first. By time store opened there were probably 30 people in line. I preordered mine no problem. Midnight launch was a blast...so much hype and Zelda was so worth it.

When gamestop took preorders it was on a thursday and I was in high school so it was impossible for me to get their. I remember reading stories of people lineing up 3 hours before to preorder which stunned me because it was only for preorders.

But when they started preorders for the Wii, they waited a month after the september press conference and set a date in stone in mid october and began hyping it up a week before so people were prepared. It was much different for the Wii U clearly.

Just wanting y'alls opinions on this...do you think Walmart will still have preorders for the Wii U by 2 PM on Sunday?

But there was rumors speculating that the wii u was coming out in november so gamestop and other stores decided to do pre orders earlier because the knew how big the wii launch was.

The best buy near me always does midnight launches every tuesday no matter the game so I still don't know about going. Anyone else just going later on in the day? or in the morning?

Originally Posted by AutoPilotOff My GameStop said no midnight because they are only getting like 6 systems

That was what I was thinking, seeing as each store will have very low quantities (unless their preorder list opens up more initial release preorders). I didn't ask, but when I paid it off the other day the manager said "see you on the 17th" so I was kinda wondering.

I'll ask next time I'm in there. I hope there will be a midnight release.

I've called every Walmart in my area and all of them said they wont be taking Wii U Deluxe preorders on the 14th. Are you guys sure you have the correct info?

Originally Posted by AgentSquishy Just wanting y'alls opinions on this...do you think Walmart will still have preorders for the Wii U by 2 PM on Sunday?

i wouldn't chance it. better get there earlier.