Gamestop Discusses The Console Launches

[Shawn Andrich]

Gamestop Discusses The Console Launches

In a conference call yesterday, Gamestop discussed Wii and PS3 launch availability.

David Carlson, the executive VP of Gamestop, remains uncertain about how many console systems they will receive from Nintendo and Sony. He explains that they expect, "Around a million units of PS3 in the US, which is somewhere around half or less of what Sony has said [it would ship]." They also expect roughly 750,000 Wii units, but they won't really know "until they actually show up at our warehouse" Carlson added.

After taking too many pre-orders against too few consoles for the Xbox 360 launch, Gamestop does not plan to take any money for the upcoming systems until they have firm launch numbers. While they expect to know more by the end of August from Nintendo, the PS3 quantities will remain a mystery for some time to come.

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[Goofonian]

Is there anywhere in north america that is taking pre-orders at the moment?

Toys'r'us in australia is taking pre-orders for both wii and ps3 at the moment and offering a free game at launch to anyone who puts down $50 for them. I had a chat to some of my old buddies who work there and they told me not to pre-order because noone in the company really had any idea when they would be releasing or how much they would be, although they were expecting both to be out by the end of november.

In then end I went and put my money down on a wii because a free game is a bit hard to pass up. I think to date, the pre-order list at the store I went to is about 6 pages long for wii and 1 or 2 for PS3 (which is likely going to be about $900 here). Fortunately I happen to know from inside experience that toys (at least in aus) will distribute their shipments to fill out preorders even if that means some store don't have any available stock for walk in customers, so I'm pretty confident I will get mine regardless how long the list of names gets in the next couple months.


edit - Release dates in australia are generally terrible. The X360 came out here this march. So despite nintendo's claims that they are going to push a worldwide release, an end of november release here is very promising for an end of october or early november release in the states.