According to Gamecubexl.com:

I'm not surprised. I'd have to dispute the part of the article that says the X-box is "popular and much more hyped." I haven't heard hardly any good hype, and a bunch of negative hype, about the X-box since it's apparently lackluster showing at E3. The GC has gotten much more coverage in the gaming press since E3. Plus Nintendo has name familiarity in the gaming industry, where as Microsoft is a new comer. Some people are just writing of the GC, when it has a good chance to be the most successful of the next-get systems. Personally I hope all the systems do well, as more competition equals more great games for us.

Argh! I hate this Sold Out crap. And before you call me a troll, I also hated it with my beloved XBox.

Amazon doesn't release the amount of Gamecubes or XBoxes that they sell. It could be 10 or 100 or 1000!

Nobody really knows. They just say they are sold out to create a false hype and then they will grab the next round of anxious gamers at their next pre-sale event. What happened to being Sold Out? Did more GameCubes and XBoxes just appear out of thin air?!

It pisses me off more that people actually buy into this BS.

Here's a link to a story written by someone with more than 5 brain cells.

http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/011008/n08262277_1.html

I'm thinking that this pre-order sellout crap is a Toys 'R Us or Amazon thing. They pulled the same stunt with the xbox earlier this year. It's just a pitiful attempt to try to get people caught up in the hype and sell a few bundles to anxious and/or gullible buyers.

I'd really be surprised if I had much trouble going to the store on launch day and picking up a Gamecube off the shelf. I thought the same about the xbox too until I read this in the above article:

"Industry analysts now expect Microsoft to ship 300,000 units on launch day"

Yikes, you know that Microsoft's partners can't be happy about that. They'd better sell out on the first day with that number. Can you imagine how embarassing it'd be if they couldn't even sell 300K boxes on launch day? It'd make Microsoft Bob look like a marketing triumph.

The launch numbers are not final yet. They are promising 1.2 million by the end of the year at 100,000 a week after launch. That is about 6 weeks from Nov. 15th. I predict the numbers will be around 450,000 for America and 150,000 for Canada at launch.

who cares my preorder went through thats all that matters right?

mine when tthrough as well, so yes, that is all that matters

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-0...nes%2Dbusiness

From IGN:
Online site Toys 'R' Us today said that it sold out of pre-order supply for Nintendo GameCube eight times faster than it did with similar pre-orders of Microsoft's Xbox console, reports the LA Times. Though the company didn't announce official numbers regarding how many units of each were preordered, it did say that it had more GameCubes than Xboxs, which again indicated a larger demand for Nintendo's next-generation console.
Toys 'R' US commented that the popularity of both consoles is a sign of a healthy videogame market to come. "We came into the season believing that the videogame category would have its best year ever, and I think these numbers are starting to bear that out," Toysrus.com spokeswoman Jeanne Meyer said.


This does show that Even after the X-box preorders, Gamecube sold more systems faster. Not precise data, but that gives you some idea of how popular GC will be over X-box. Take into account the fact that Microsoft has been promoting it's system for months, while Nintendo has just started.

Also X-box pre-orders started weeks ago, meaning people held out on buying those to specifically wait for Nintendo (in most cases).

Based on the fact that kbtoys.com has been taking pre-orders for several *hours* today, I'd have to say it looks like Amazon must not have had very many Gamecubes at all.

The "sold-out-in-4-minutes" BS sure looks like a publicity stunt now.

You really believe KBtoys online would get more units than the #1 online store in the world?

It sure looks that way. I was sitting at my PC, refreshing my screen constantly, during the amazon.com sale. I never even got an indication that the sale had started.

Contrast that to the sales at kbtoys.com and bestbuy.com today that lasted for hours.

The only real difference is that amazon.com sent out an e-mail 3 days ahead of time, telling people when the sale would begin, and word spread during that weekend, so there were probably a lot more people aware of the amazon.com sale & lined up to order.

But 4 minutes??? I want to see the numbers. Nintendo is a master at playing the hype game.

I would just say that more people knew about the Amazon pre-order as Amazon is a much more popular store. A lot of people don't even know there is a kbkids website.

Plus a lot of people that were set on preordering it probably got one then, or already had one preordered from places like outpost.com.

At any rate there's no way to know without having info on how many each place had.

I'm not bothering preordering one. With 700,000 at launch and 1.1 million by the end of the year I don't think I'll have any problems finding one around here. I picked up a GBA at launch without a preorder, and the demand for them was arguably higher than that for the GC.