News: DSlite oddities

March 02, 2006, 10:07 AM

by chazumaru, via Nintendo -
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The DSlite came out last night in Japan and, of course, all initial stock disappeared in a matter of minutes. Production issues, for which Nintendo apologized, did not help satisfy the delirious demand. The Kyoto-based game maker will not deliver the promised one million units for the month of March, but hopes to get a bit less than half of them shipped to stores and has been forced to provide old models as well (probably from stock originally supposed to go overseas). The current craze has spawned various odd stories and anecdotes, such as shops buying your DSlite for 16,000 yen - which was more than the console's retail price. Quite a con game when, later today, you could see some of the last machines available being sold in stores for 41,000 yen (roughly the PS2's price at launch). Another interesting pheonomenon was the return of massive queues waiting under the rain for the shops' opening hour. This traditional image of japanese gamers' habits had been seriously contested in the last few years, with the surging popularity of the more convenient preorder system. Alas, almost no shop accepted preorders in the case of the DSlite, and those who did limited the offer to their frequent costumers who would then get the right to participate in a draw to know which of them would "win" the opportunity to purchase the machine. Similar scenes should happen with the arrival of the second batch of DSlite consoles, around the middle of the month. Via DS³.net, GA-F, Akibablog and 2ch.