LONG Report from this morning - Ichikawa ToysRus. (just skip it if it's too long for your attention span....)
Yesterday evening a cold rain took hold of Tokyo with suburbs, preparing pods and pools of cool water to annoy people lining up for the launch day. I chose to go to ToysRUs in Ichikawa (a suburb to Tokyo). ToysRUs apparently has some trouble with getting their finances in the black (fiscal year ending on March 31st) and managed to convince Nintendo to ship them massive amount of units, probably thanks to some lobbying including strong words on support in the US market for Nintendo. Thus the store I went to, were able to announce that 120 units would be in starting sales at 10:00am today (thursday). No pre-bookings.
Japanese sites, such as price comparison sites have had a surge of typical non-gamers, people who never have queued up for a game software or hardware release before, asking questions about what timing would be necessary. Considering the extreme demand for DS in general, and crazy appetite for DS Lite, I decided to go early.
Joining the queue at a few minutes past 04:00am, I first couldn't see any people in line, and thought I was at the wrong place. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I could see people sitting on now half-wet cardboard sheets, portable chairs, or just standing in front of the store. With only around 5-8 degrees C in the air, I was amazed also at the type of people in line. There were families with small kids, typical Akiba Otaku game freaks, Grand-pa's and Grand-ma's and a few younger couples. All in all I counted about 40 people in front of me in the line.
Beside me sat a young office lady in her early twenties, literally freezing her &"#% off, in suit jacket, thin coat and skirt (OMG - what was she thinkng?) and only a fleece blanket to protect....
Having brought my best Swedish outfit good for double-digit minus degrees, I held out well, but couldn't help feel sorry and a bit angry at Nintendo and ToysRus for the shortages, and inability to open the store up early. By 0630am the quota of 120 units was matched by the number of people in line. At the count they actually had to ask the last 10 people or so from the queue to leave, although they had queued for a good 45 minutes in the cold. Cards with queue numbers were handed out. I was at number 42. Chatting with number 41 kept us busy for an hour or so, and we took turns to go buy heated cans of coffee and tea.
Eventhough it was clear at 0700 who would be doing the buying of these precious units, the store didn't open until 1000, 6 hours after having arrived on location.
At 0800 ToysRUs staff handed out insurance pamphlets for everyone (the usual expensive one with questionable coverage for things that are often already covered for by the manufacturer) Not many people took up on their offer though it seems.
The most popular Joint purchase people made were protection film (Hori) for Lite. A lot of Brain Age (Second serving) was purchased, as well as other non-non-games - Mana, Animal, Puzzlink.
People seemed very very happy to have the unit in their hands, and the staff was very friendly. A long wait for a second iteration of an existing system, but looking at the composition of the people in line, many were first time users - tempted by the non-games getting immense publicity.
In any case, it was worth the wait.
