Nintendo Japan and its retail partners kicked off official 3DS pre-orders yesterday, a little over one month ahead of the system's February 26 Japanese launch. But just as quickly as they started, pre-orders came to an end at many retailers.

Hundreds lined up outside shops around Tokyo to put their names down for a system. Larger retailers had lines of over 200 people ahead of opening. The large Bic Camera in Tokyo's central Yurakucho area, a popular spot for official launch events, had 250 people reserve a system by its official 10:00am start of business (we know this figure because Bic sent out a rare press release announcing it).

We heard similar stories from retailers across town. The common themes for the day were long lines and quick sellouts of initial preorder stock.

The situation was no different online. Amazon opened pre-orders ahead of noon. Available pre-orders were snapped up within minutes as the site suffered what appeared to be server issues due to a sudden burst in traffic. Other online retailers also sold out quickly.

Joining the pre-orders, Nintendo started to give the 3DS official presence at retailers, with official signage and even demo units at larger shops. It looks like, following the preliminaries of Nintendo World a couple of weeks back, the 3DS promotional campaign has kicked into full gear.

3DS demo units at Bic Camera in Tokyo's central Yurakucho area.

Nintendo has said that it plans to ship 4 million 3DS units worldwide by the March 31 end of the current fiscal year. Of these, 1.5 million are targeted for Japan. We've heard unconfirmed reports from retailers that of the 1.5 million, 400,000 units will be available on launch day.

The 400,000 figure is around the same number of Wii units that Japan got on day one back in 2006. Wii also had huge lines when pre-orders started ahead of its release, but launch day still ended up seeing lengthy lines reaching into the thousands at some shops (including the above mentioned Bic Camera).

Based off the initial response to 3DS pre-orders, we're expecting a similar outcome on February 26 as 3DS makes its world debut in Japan.

http://ds.ign.com/articles/114/1145129p1.html

I wonder if US pre-orders will sell out.  Also, does Amazon guarrantee that you will get a 3DS during launch week if you pre-order?

I pre-order 2 just in case the bidding price is good enough.

Amazon is already experiencing problems with pre-orders due to many people pre-ordering the system.

MOST of the time when some new hardware is available in Japan, it sells out. Interesting.

Ahh glad it's going to do so well, and I will be ond of the people who have pre-ordered it in EMEAA.

They've allocated far too few 3DSs for Japan - they'll probably need in the ballpark of a million first day.

That is false as Kinect wasn't really well received over there.

Also, Those 400k shipment are going to fly off shelves.

Man Nintendo why bother advertising the thing when you won't be shipping enough units to retailers to meet demand? Honestly I'm glad I'm Canadian I got a pre-order in November and their was no line-up their was no pressure I just walked in and pre-ordered. Not to mention it was done quitly nobody knew pre-orders were being accepted so their was no crowd.

Now launch day I'll go pick mine up and then their will be a crowd. But I'd hate to line-up in Japan for a unit and be denied one because I never got their early enough. Then again when I line up for something I usually go 10-12 hours early so I would probubly still get one.

But still I like not having the chaos the poor japanese gamers have to endure!

Gooooooooooooooooo 3DS!!!!!

Meh, it'll sell mediocre for undershipping.

Nice. Hopefully it will be another DS type success.