While its reputation has waned, Tokyo’s Akihabara has long been the go-to place for new game and PC hardware releases. It lived up to that billing recently as a new NVIDIA graphics card chipset hit the market. However, the lottery for the hard-to-buy release led to chaos in the streets, as well as property damage.
The NVIDIA RTX 5080 and 5090 are the latest releases from the chip manufacturer, whose GPUs (Graphics Processing Unit) power 82% of all games played on Steam. The $1,000 RTX 4080 has received some lukewarm reviews, with ArsTechnica saying it’s more a souped-up version of its predecessor, the 4080. However, reviewers universally say the 5090 – which costs as much as an entire PC at USD $2,000 – is a monstrously fast chipset for content creators and AI data-crunchers that also delivers an out-of-this-world gaming experiences (for a price).
Sadly, there aren’t enough cards produced with the new GPUs to meet demand. Some have deemed the release a “paper launch” after stores turned thousands of customers away.
Things didn’t go any better here in Japan. Once Japan’s centerpiece for new tech releases, Akihabara has lost a bit of its luster thanks in part to Internet e-commerce. However, it was the center of attention on Thursday as hundreds of people lined up outside of PC Kobo. The store, which had a limited number of both cards, was giving away raffle tickets for its stock.
The rush for tickets caused a near-stampede outside of the store. Reports from ITMedia and NTV (below) say that enthusiasts were trespassing into a nearby preschool in an attempt to get a better position in line.
PC Kobo said it would start selling tickets at 3pm and asked people to line up then. However, a flood of people arrived much earlier. The store staff of 20 wasn’t sufficient to control the 400+ people who showed up.
NTV says 90% were foreigners who didn’t appear to understand enough Japanese to heed instructions. That means the majority waiting were likely Chinese resellers. Groups of Chinese resellers have drawn ire in Japan recently as they’ve crashed events such as the Hello Kitty and My Melody 50th anniversary goods releases, buying up stock and forcing fans to purchase merchandise off of resale sites at a markup.
No one was injured. The preschool sustained some light property damage as trespassers broke the school’s wooden, handmade sign.
Unitcom Inc., which runs PC Kobo, apologized for the trouble and for the damage to the preschool. It says it’ll compensate the school for the damages.
It’s pretty obvious why resellers wanted to score the new GPUs. One auction on popular Japanese resale site Mercari shows a Galakuro Gaming card driven by the RTX 5080 sold for 319,000 yen (USD $2,055). A press release says the card should retail for 229,800 yen ($1,480).
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