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NYC crowds brave cold weather for the Nintendo Wii U launch

The new console went on sale at midnight tonight, with a launch event at the Manhattan Nintendo World store.

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Dan Ackerman Editorial Director / Computers and Gaming
Dan Ackerman leads CNET's coverage of computers and gaming hardware. A New York native and former radio DJ, he's also a regular TV talking head and the author of "The Tetris Effect" (Hachette/PublicAffairs), a non-fiction gaming and business history book that has earned rave reviews from the New York Times, Fortune, LA Review of Books, and many other publications. "Upends the standard Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs/Mark Zuckerberg technology-creation myth... the story shines." -- The New York Times
Expertise I've been testing and reviewing computer and gaming hardware for over 20 years, covering every console launch since the Dreamcast and every MacBook...ever. Credentials
  • Author of the award-winning, NY Times-reviewed nonfiction book The Tetris Effect; Longtime consumer technology expert for CBS Mornings
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Dan Ackerman

Nintendo's Wii U is now on sale in the U.S., following a midnight launch event at the Nintendo World store in Manhattan's Rockefeller Center.

The Nintendo Wii U midnight launch (pictures)

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Fans started gathering more as early as Thursday for a chance to be the first to own the Wii U, a living room game console with a tablet-style controller. The Wii U is the first new living room game console from any of the big three console-makers (Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo) since the the 2005-2006 releases of the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Nintendo Wii.

For a closer look at the midnight launch festivities, check out the photo gallery above. Our hands-on impressions of the Wii U console itself can be found here, which will be revised into a full review as the Wii U adds promised features (including streaming-video apps) that are missing on day one, but will be added post-launch via software updates.