With the major Wii hype this year, and the PS3 trying to kill itself before it's even released, I'm starting to grow heistant about my chances of securing a Wii, since I haven't pre-ordered. Am I just being paranoid today?
I've never relied on preorders. Well, I've done so - twice...and neither of them went through.
Okay, the first one wasn't a pre-order, exactly, but more like a reservation that turned out to be unnecessary. I went to an EBGames when the GBA was new...I think this was the summer of 2001? I was surprised to run into a Drama classmate who was working there. I asked her about CastleVania: Circle Of The Moon. She put my name down and said I'd be contacted when they got a shipment of more of them. They called me back a couple months later - when I'd already acquired the game elsewhere and finished it the morning they called me. >_<
Then I was hyped about the GameCube, so I had it pre-ordered at Future Shop. I was waiting in front of the store the morning of launch, and the only person ahead of me was this mother who was getting it for her boys and husband. For a while it seemed like we were the only ones waiting, though a couple more people eventually showed up. But then my dad, who seemed to be embarrassed about the whole waiting-in-line thing, had cruised around the block and found that Zellers had already opened and had lots of GameCubes and no line-up at all. So we grabbed a Jet Black GameCube from there instead (and cancelled my Future Shop pre-order later in the day), and I was already back home taking on the Death Star in Rogue Leader just as Future Shop was opening.
I got the DS on the first day at Wal-Mart, no problems save for a small line-up. Throughout the course of the GameCube, I've managed to score games on the first day of release (or at least the first day I had time to go shopping for them), never bothering with pre-orders and never having difficulty finding those games (except for when renting - stupid Blockbuster and Mario Superstar Baseball! $#@%! But that's another story). Oh, wait, I did have trouble getting Nintendogs...
Now all that unnecessary banter above has led me to believe that on whatever day the Wii comes out (which we'll hopefully know next week), I might be able to waltz into a Zellers or Wal-Mart that morning and just pick up a Wii and a couple games off the shelf. That is, if it was as relatively unhyped (well, compared to the Xbox) like the GameCube or like the DS (which initially wasn't as hot as it has come to be). As my singular difficulty with Nintendogs shows, I may be in for some trouble if I don't get off my lazy butt.
Every week this year it seems like there's been praise for the Wii and disdain for the PS3. The Wii is even interesting people who at one point seemed to be anti-Nintendo fanboys. These people are now going to be after the coveted Wii, and now I wonder if I should've already pre-ordered.
I already spent a few hundred dollars to go to E3 and see the Wii for myself firsthand - it'd look bad if I couldn't get my own Wii just as early as anybody else this autumn!
Again: should I have already pre-ordered? I don't know why I feel like I should at least wait for Nintendo's unveiling of the date and price...