Video Game Hype

Being in the video game industry, this past weekend was a big one for all gamers. It was the official North American launch for the new Sony Playstation 3 and the Nintendo Wii.

The PS3 came out on shelves on Friday, Nov 17th, but the masses lined up, some as early as Wednesday evening, insane! The local news reported people even paying the homeless guys to line up for them, they figured it paid more than having to pan handle for that day. In the states, it was way worse, with people running over one another as they scramble for the units...the process is a little more crazier down there, in that they don't provide the people first in line with first priority, they make everyone run for the units as soon as the doors open. There were even reportings of people being mugged for their PS3's... what the hell, oh but it doesn't stop there, soon afterward, these crazy little machines go for thousands of dollars on Ebay, what the?!?

Then on Sunday, the Nintendo Wii launched - I knew the hype wasn't as crazy, but Nintendo have done some really cool things with this unit, the one main distinction is that it has two wands / controllers that you use as if you were actually performing that function, for example, playing tennis, you would actually do a swing like in normal tennis! More info on their website.

Anyway since I missed the pre-order calls with EB Games and Zellers and other places, I would have to go and line up and try first thing in the morning. Best Buy and Future Shop for sure would've had line ups, and they did, so I didn't really bother. So, I thought I'd try out Zellers in Oakridge. Last year, around the same time, Microsoft's X360 came out, and I was lucky enough to get 1 of the 4 units they had on launch day... so I thought I might be lucky again with the Wii... but no such luck, we got there about an hour before opening, and already there were a few cars around, and the people had grabbed the priority vouchers already... too bad.

But I'm going to try again tomorrow, apparently there's another shipment coming in.

This is all very exciting times in the video game world, and I've been in the industry long enough now to actually know and see the difference in what goes on in the back-end, and it's very cool!