Japanese brave the elements for Sony's PS3 launch!

[JTK]

Go to Gamespot or any game site of your choice and you'll see it all over the place.

Sheer bedlam, madness, and chaos in Japan as roughly 80,000 or PS3's hit the streets today and disappeared in the blink of an eye.

How many Xbox360's or HD-DVD add ons have sold at this point?

Anyways, you all will want to keep an eye on this as we're going to get kind of a glimpse of what a week from now will be like for us.

Remember: The Japanese are super hardcore about this stuff, especially when it comes from Nintendo or Sony.

I'm already seeing a handful of threads pop up on some forums from people who got one...

"And so it begins..."




Do we have any folks from Japan here? We'd love to hear from anyone in the East that got lucky and scored a PS3!

[JTK]

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6161537...stnews;title;1

100,000 PS3's per week?!

Sony expects to ship 100 thousand units every week after today's launch, which should give it total sales of about 400,000 units by the time the Wii is released in December.

This is refering to Japan but it bodes well for everyone if Sony can really pull this off.

Obviously, I think everyone knows to be careful with hype and take a seeing is believing attitude, but I certainly hope this hits close to the general ballpark of reality vs. months of 360 like BS shortages.

Obviously if you read any of this Japanese coverage, those 80,000 or so PS3's were gone in no time, like hotcakes.

The demand is huge for these things everywhere.

[BTBuck1]

i don't think sony is going to have the hardware problems they had with the ps2. That said i think they will have an easier time with fulfilling new allocations because they aren't spending half their resources replacing broken units (think xbox360 last fall/winter/spring) I think sony's had plenty of time to work out any kinks and here's to hoping it was time well spent.

[Josh]

Japan deserves 100K units per week. They got stiffed on the launch with only 80K units. Every week is going to be the repeat of long lines.

[phloyd]

Actually I am wondering how that is going to pan out here (US)... ie, is the second wave going to be big and planned or are they going to trickle out at odd times, requiring constant vigilance.

It would be nice to get one before Xmas...

[Jeff®]

http://tinyurl.com/yfdedo

Japanese brave the elements for Sony's PS3


By Reuters

Published: November 11, 2006, 5:56 AM PST


TOKYO-Thousands of game fans queued for hours, braving Tokyo's early morning chill and occasional showers, as Sony's much-heralded and delayed PlayStation 3 game console went on sale on Saturday.

The PS3 is the latest entrant to the near $30 billion video game industry and will be fighting Microsoft's Xbox 360, on sale for the past year, and Nintendo's Wii, which will be in U.S. stores next week, for market share.
"I've been waiting for this day to come for so long. I'll play it all through the weekend. No time for meals," said hardcore gamer Tomoaki Nakamura, who already owns a PlayStation, a PlayStation 2, a PlayStation Portable handheld machine and an Xbox 360. (For a CNET Reviews encounter with the PS3, click here for video.)


Nakamura, 41, was one of about 1,200 people in the meandering line around electronics retailer Bic Camera's flagship shop in central Tokyo.........

[hyperdine]

Originally Posted by Jeff®

"I've been waiting for this day to come for so long. I'll play it all through the weekend. No time for meals," said hardcore gamer Tomoaki Nakamura, who already owns a PlayStation, a PlayStation 2, a PlayStation Portable handheld machine and an Xbox 360.

LOL That's a real gamer right there. No time for meals! With a PS3 in hand, you better believe it.

Just think...that Tsunami is going to be hitting our shores in six days!

BTW, I'm digging the Blu-Wizard smilies

[JTK]

Jeff®'s thread is a lot better than mine.



If it can be done, maybe the mods can merge whatever might be useful out of my thread into this one. Whatever works.

[Jeff®]

Here's some more:

[hyperdine]

Nice job with the Vulcan mind-merge with the threads

Where are all the analysts saying the PS3 was "too expensive" now?

...oh, there they are...they're in line buying a PS3

[Jeff®]

Originally Posted by hyperdine

...oh, there they are...they're in line buying a PS3

[JTK]

Originally Posted by hyperdine

Nice job with the Vulcan mind-merge with the threads

Where are all the analysts saying the PS3 was "too expensive" now?

...oh, there they are...they're in line buying a PS3

Truth.

[Chris Beveridge]

The 100,000 for Japan won't be difficult per week, since shipping them is, well, local.

I can imagine that they're producing more than that but staggering shipments to the US, hence the supposed 1 or 2 restock events that are looking to happen. Japan DOES need the weekly re-stocking though more than here, to gain parity with the # being released here.

[Jeff®]

http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/7062/52/

Will PS3 wipe Xbox 360 into the dust in Japan?

By Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Sunday, 12 November 2006

With stocks of the PS3 sold out before noon in at least one Japanese store, Sony’s next-gen assault on the near US $30 billion gaming market has launched with the shock and awe only the US Military was thought capable of.

The scenes were wild. Pushing, shoving, and threats to stop all sales of the PS3 if anyone got injured in the line for a new PS3 at the Bic Camera flagship store in downtown Tokyo.

And by the time beleaguered store staff could even hope to estimate how many people were still in line once sales had begun, the PS3 was all but sold out, leaving many fans disappointed and jealous of the lucky few to own a PS3.

I’d have wanted a bodyguard to protect me from the hordes of fans all clamouring to get into Sony’s vision of next-gen gaming, and if I were mega rich, I might have even hired bodyguards to protect me from my bodyguards.

Unlike in the US, where pranksters purchased an Xbox 360 on launch day and promptly smashed it into pieces with a sledgehammer, and filmed themselves doing it, to the shock of those still in line, so they could post it onto the Internet to gain instant infamy, no such reports have so far emanated from Japan. They love their technology too much to destroy it so wantonly.

And with the PS3’s price far higher than the Xbox 360, it’d be a terrible waste of good money. Few have so much spare cash to be able to do that. Unless they’re Internet pranksters looking for fame on Youtube, of course.

But I’m sure we’ll hear of such reports come November 17 where 400,000 consoles will go on sale in the US, where the scenes at stores are likely to be just as frenetic. Only in America, as they say!

No-one has reported how many Xbox 360’s were sold in Japan on the day of their PS3 launch. Such figures are likely a closely guarded secret, but would anyone in Japan have decided to buy an Xbox 360 if they couldn’t purchase a PS3?

Given the Xbox 360’s poor sales record in the land of the rising sun, it’s hard to say. How would you feel if you wanted a PS3 badly enough to wait in line for hours and hours? You’d hardly be consoling yourself (excuse the pun) with an alternative games console.

Now that the PS3 is finally here (although Aussies and Europeans have a dreaded four month wait to contend with) the next-gen war has truly begun in earnest.

All the gaming world needs now are more PS3s and more amazing games to distract us from the realities of everyday life, from eating, to hygiene, to family and work.

And don’t forget the sales frenzy yet to come with Nintendo’s Wii set to burst onto the world scene in the next few weeks to amazing acclaim all its own.

It’s going to be a very next-gen gaming Christmas, with 2007 set to break all gaming records. It’ll be a year to remember!

[Deciazulado]

"Fighting has literally broken out on the streets of Tokyo"

[Dave]

In 3-4 days it will be the same in US!
xSux addon will be outsold 100:1!

[Blackraven]

Originally Posted by Dave

In 3-4 days it will be the same in US!
xSux addon will be outsold 100:1!

I agree.

See, this is why it was a bad move for MS to go by the way of the addon.

Truly shows that it must either be an "integrated" release or don't release at all.

External add-on crap won't cut it at all.