I think you're right about it just being a different time than it was in 2006.


For the Wii I had to camp outside of a Wal-Mart from 9pm to about 7am, when they finally had pity on us and let us come in a purchase our Wiis well before the store was supposed to open. There were 50 total at the store, and there were 49 of us in line all night. One lucky kid and his mom showed up around 6 am and managed to get the last one. It was an amazing experience, and I thought I'd definitely do something like that again, but I wanted to secure my Wii U so I pre-ordered.


There were virtually no midnight launches in my area, and I don't think anyone had to do camp outs to get their console. Anyone that really wanted one just pre-ordered it and had it shipped to their store of choice, or straight to their homes.


I think launch lines like that will definitely die out. Lots of gamers enjoyed that experience, but in the end the security of pre-ordering will win, so long as it's an option.

I jumped on the WalMart Pre-orders at the first chance I got, and my wife and I drove to Raleigh (the only WalMart in the area taking pre-orders) at 11:15 PM on the 17th.  When I got there, there were about 15 people sitting there, with the earliest people saying they got there around 5 PM that day. 

At midnight, a woman walked out a shopping cart with 6 deluxe and 5 basic systems, and asked who pre-ordered.  My wife and I were the only ones, so she had us jump to the front of the line to check us out so we could be sure to get our system.


For the Wii, I didn't get into the system launch fervor, but about a year after it launched I did some searching on how to find one, and one forum member on another website mentioned you could scan Target's bar code for the Wii to see what they had in stock on Saturdays that they were planning on selling the following day.  Used this trick to have a good idea of what day to stroll in early and get my Wii.

I do wonder what kind of sales this console will have in the next year or so.  I know I haven't seen any free ones in the wild in my area since the launch day, but I also recall reading things about Nintendo having constraints in their production that kept them from making too many.

At the risk of comparing apples to oranges, people still queue up every year in my local shopping center for the new iphone and ipad. That's regardless of internet shopping or global economics.
At the risk of sailing too close to another "Smart phones are killing video games" debate - I think the biggest factor in a lack of Wii U lines is the comparative lack of enthusiasm for a very different product and marketing message to last time.

I thought this was going to be a comparison of the the launch game lineups between the two systems.

Funny you mention that.  I thought the exact same thing based on the title.  I replaced the word "lines" with "lineup" in my head.  Reading comprehension fail on my part.

I showed up to my Wii launch line at 11PM the night before launch. The store opened at 8AM the next day. I was 11th in line. That Best Buy had 83 units available for non pre-order people, and the line hit 83 at around 3AM. Absolutely crazy.

Wii U launch was very different this past Sunday. I had a pre-order, but I still showed up 2 hours before the store opened. I was first in line. About 30 minutes later, the first non pre-order person showed up. 10 minutes before the store opened, an employee handed out tickets to everyone in line who wanted a Wii U. 10 tickets were handed out. I had about 14 people waiting in line behind me when they let us in to pick up out consoles.

Quite the different experience, to say the least. Wii launch was insane. Wii U launch... not so much. I wonder how the 720/PS4 launches will compare. You have to imagine Microsoft will do a TON of marketing for their new console.

I agree that it is partially due to just changing times and whatnot.  But I also think that Nintendo may have underestimated the amount of apathy with the Wii brand that grew over the last 2-3 years.  I've told many people (colleagues, friends, family) about the Wii U coming out and the most common reaction I've heard is, "Oh god, not another one."  Obviously I'm on board with the new console, but I'll be interested to see if others are as well.  This could be a Nintendo generation analogous to the Gamecube: not a failure by any means, but not an unparalleled success either.

I'll break down the reasons I think the lines are shorter.

1.  Revolution

Like it or not, the Wii really was a revolution when it first came out.  The use of motion controls was the biggest change to gaming since the jump to 3D a decade earlier.  The Wii U on the other hand uses a traditional controller and the touch screen aspects Nintendo's handheld the DS introduced 8 years earlier.  So the Wii U lacks the new factor that gave the Wii so much hype.

2.  Price

The Wii was released in 2006 for only $250 with a game.  The Wii U is being released in 2012 with the cheapest model costing $300 with no game.  The economy in North America was much better in 2006 then it is now in 2012.  So releasing a more expensive system when the economy of that market is worse, is going to have an impact as well.

3.  Zelda vs Mario

Twilight Princess had somewhere over 80% attachment rate for the Wii's launch, showing the overwhelming majority of people were buying the systems for that game at launch.  Twilight Princess was the Ocarina of Time sequel that many had waited 8 years for vs NSMB U which is the newest game in a series that has had 4 installments in 6.5 years and have all been similar gameplay wise.  Ocarina of Time sold over 7.6 million copies while Majora's Mask and Wind Waker both only did half of that.  So having a sequel to Ocarina of Time was a huge deal to a lot of gamers since they hadn't played anything like it in 8 years, and the fact that Twilight Princess would go on to sell over 7.1 million and be the second best selling Zelda behind only Ocarina, pretty much shows how big a deal that game was.

Yes, NSMB U will easily outsell Twilight Princess in the long run, but for launch sales, something like Twilight Princess is going to get people standing hours in line for a day one buy, vs NSMB U which is something people will eventually buy but don't feel like standing hours in line to get.

4.  Competition

In 2006, the Wii was the last system released on the market, so people already knew what the 360/PS3 had to offer and their price.  In 2012 though, the Wii U is the first system on the market so I wouldn't be surprised if there's a good sized group of people who want to know what games the 720/PS4 will have and what their price will be as well.  If these systems end up having poor lineup's for launch and cost over $500 next year, I wouldn't be surprised if the Wii U gets a nice holiday boast in 2013 since it'll be the better looking deal, like the Wii was in 2006 to many.

5.  Expecting History to Repeat Itself

Because the Wii's launch was so crazy, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people thought the Wii U's would be as well.  Since the lines back in 2006 were so huge, a lot of people in the back half who waited were unable to get a system on launch day.  So if a lot of these people who had bad experiences trying to get a Wii back in 2006 thought the same thing would happen for the Wii U, that would account for a good amount not wanting to get it at launch this time as well.


Even though I still expect the Wii U to have a great holiday season these are the the main reasons I feel why people didn't feel compelled to buy it day one and will buy it on a later date instead.

I'm so jelly about you. I've allways wanted to camp out but where I live everybody just cares about Gears of War and Halo and all that kind of games. It really sucks. Not to hang out with your friends or whoever outside a store for a major event. Yeah....

Very drastic experience from both launch events.

Wii: I was working at the Nintendo store in NYC during the holiday season but before I started there I hadn't pre-ordered a Wii. When it was first announced I figured it would get hated on by the mainstream gaming community so I wouldn't have to pre-order, I thought I'd just waltz in to any store and pick one up. Wrong. As soon as I started at the Nintendo store and saw the lines of people waiting to just come in and play with the damn thing (they had like 12 demo units up with almost every launch game playable before the release) I knew things were going to get hectic, but being a month before the launch day, I couldn't pre-order anywhere and even as an employee of the store, wasn't guaranteed to get one.

The night before launch I was working and actually saw the first few people camping out. In fact, I think a small handful (10 people?) may have started the line 2 days before and received several complaints that they were blocking the doors lol. So yeah, the morning of launch I had to come in extra early. For anyone familiar with NYC, I took the downtown 1 train to 50th, walked down to 46th and headed towards Rockefeller Plaza.. and from a block away I could see a massive group of people at the corner of 46th and 5th, the opposite side of the block where NWS was. You should of seen the looks some people gave me as they thought I was cutting them in line when in reality I was trying to get in to the damn store (as a seasonal employee we didn't have access to the employee entrance and they were so busy inside when I called that no one came to that door for me).

Shit was nuts, that's the best way I can describe it. From both inside and outside, shit was nuts. We're all scrambling trying to get as many systems out to the main floor from the basement storage as possible, then we're out making sure the crowd didn't get too crazy and also trying to count how many people were on-line so we can gauge where the cut off would be. Pure insanity. At the end of the shift the managers pulled us aside and said if any employee wants to pick up a game or accessories, to the back of the line (which they'd already cut off) so I got some games an extra controllers, but couldn't get a system. Thankfully I had called a ton of people that I knew would be out and about that day and I was able to get not one but TWO wii's due to miss communication. Yeah I could of sold the 2nd one for crazy amounts of profit, but seeing how some people from the first nights line decided to came put into the NEXT day, and hearing about madhouses elsewhere, even up in my more suburban part of NY, I felt kinda bad and decided NOT to rip anyone off. My mom had a friend who was looking for one but she was older and really couldn't deal with those crazy crowds, so we sold it to her at the regular value. Hooray for kindness.

Obviously after how hectic it was back in '06, I decided to save myself the headache and pre-ordered mine the second I could. I did it all on-line, and picked the store-pick up option so I wouldn't have to wait until monday for the delivery. What struck me as odd was my local Best Buy didn't have the option for in-store pick-up but another one did, a little further but not necessarily out of the way; I'm in the area on a normal basis.

So the day comes, I went to Best Buy and was only a few minutes early and saw no-line. I thought "well.. this is the smaller one on the outskirts of 2 cities, 1 with a bigger BB and at least 5 gamestops, and another with a walmart, target and at least 3 gamestops" so I park and run in to the CVS nearby for a drink. Crossing the parking lot I see these 20-something year olds, look like they could be gamers, just kinda sitting and waiting; I figured they were there to pick up a pre-order too and since there was no line, they were more casual about the wait. As soon as I come out of CVS  its still only about 10:56 and the store would be open at 11. I figure screw it, I'll go be the weirdo standing by the door until they open. But as I walk closer, I see people coming in and out of the store, the ones exiting with bags in hand. When I'm close enough the sign indicates they were actually open since 10 (damn you website!!!) so I walk in and there's NO line at the pick-up area. In fact, the girl there wasn't even quiet sure what it was I had come to pick up even though there were at least 5 boxes piled up behind her. Instead of giving me one of those, they had mine in a large locker and there was a bit of a wait for whomever had the key for it, I used that time to seek out a game or two..

I walk across the store looking for the Wii U section and they have a small table set up with all the launch titles stacked up and several employees, but the 3 of them were just casually chit-chatting until I realized they were blocking the games. It was a fairly large stack in each pile but of course it looks like a lot more because you're not used to seeing stacks of games at store like this, ya know? I ask for ZombieU and they walk it over to the pick up area where I still have to wait a few minutes for them to get the damn locker open , but at least they rang me up for the game in the mean-time. As I waited off to the side to be handed my system, a small line started forming at customer pick-up but I couldn't tell what they were there for. Since I didn't have the biggest look around, I couldn't tell if they had any other Wii U systems in the games section  or if the 5 or so stacked at customer service/pick-up was all they had. All in all the store was fairly quiet, what you would expect a store like that to be on an early Sunday morning.

They employees didn't seem frazzled as if they just dealt with a madhouse, the store didn't look like a disorganized mess and I honestly didn't care enough to ask if they did have people waiting outside or not, the few other times I've been to this particular BB, the customer service isn't great so I doubt they'd care to answer me even if I asked.

All I know is it was a very different feel from last time, and at least for me, I know it's because I pre-ordered mine. I could of walked in 5 minutes to closing and picked up my system if I had to. That wasn't the case as I was so excited to just go home and play - which is another thing that differs from last year. I wasn't home as early because of work and a long commute, I had to stop by my mothers to pick up the system before going home, and I worked my 2nd job early the next day, So the most I did was set it up to the TV but didn't turn it on until at east the next day at some point, if not maybe 2 days later?  The important part is, I have one and I'm content with it.

Why would you even care if your friends like gears or not? My best friend loves nintendo and a couple of our other friends love PS3 and Microsoft. However, when there is a major release such as a new gears, god of war, or Modern Warfare I will still go with them. It doesn't matter if my opinions differ from theirs its the fact that they love games just as much as i do.