E3’s Main Event - The Wii Line
Posted by inpheaux on May 11th, 2006 at 9:17 am
E3 is all about epic larger-than-life things. It's about taking everything normal and making it 50 feet tall so no one can miss it. Of all the things I saw during the first day of E3, one was clearly the largest: The line for the Nintendo Wii exhibit.
Nintendo's exhibit has two main parts this year. On one side, you have an open collection of DS Lite kiosks. On the other, you have a GIANT enclosed space for the Wii Exhibit. Unlike the Sony booth, or hell, any of the other booths I went to, the Wii Exhibit is set up to give you a not-crowded experience of increasingly interactive displays. First you walk by videos. Then you see Nintendo employees playing assorted games. Then you get to see E3 attendees being called up for periodic "Living Room" mockup demos. And then, you finally get free access to a huge assortment of kiosks for the 27 Wii games on display at the show.
Overall, the layout looks something like this, but even that image doesn't do The Line justice. Hopefully this image gallery will. For a quick reference of how quickly it got to this level, IMMEDIATELY after the doors opened yesterday the line was up to corner 2. I got in with pre-registered media, for media early hours. That means the line was stretched that far purely due to exhibitors who left their own booths to see Nintendo's. Very shortly after that, the line stretched all the way down the last wall and STAYED THERE the rest of the day. These specific pictures of the line were taken around 1300 PT.
Right, so enjoy that set of pictures. There's more coming.
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