Midnight City

An ode to 20+ years of late-night console launches

Some moments in life mark time in a very particular way - birthdays, weddings, the arrival of your first child - and, if you’re wired like me, the launch of a new video game console.

I’m 38 now, a father of three, and most of my gaming happens in stolen hours after bedtime routines and before I inevitably fall asleep on the couch. But every now and then, I look back at the strange little milestones that were midnight console launches. Those cold, chaotic, oddly joyful nights somehow meant more than just bringing home a new piece of tech.

My first launch was the Xbox 360. I was a freshman at Michigan State, still getting used to living away from home, fueled by cafeteria food and the boundless energy of someone with no back pain or kids. A few fraternity brothers and I heard whispers that the local Best Buy was getting a shipment. Naturally, we had to be there. So we drove out, stood in a line that wrapped around the block, and waited with dozens of strangers, all buzzing with the same nervous excitement. We had no guarantees, no preorders, just hope. And somehow, I walked out with one. We brought it back to the house and stayed up all night setting it up, playing Call of Duty 2 and arguing over controller turns like we were ten years old again.

The Wii came next, and with it, a different kind of memory. I was back home, standing outside a Best Buy again, this time not for a midnight sale but for a lottery. That’s how Nintendo rolled back then. A crowd of eager fans gathered, each one clutching a little slip of paper and silently praying to the gaming gods. With me was my 12-year-old cousin Martin, who was absolutely convinced he was walking out of there with a Wii. My number got called. His didn’t. It was the kind of moment you laugh about twenty years later. At the time, though? Sorry again, Martin.

When the PlayStation 3 launched, I was a college sophomore. The price tag was $600, which felt absolutely bonkers at the pre-recession time. But I wanted it, like we all did. The demand was brutal, and stock was even worse. But a cousin of mine, with questionable but apparently effective connections, managed to slip me one through a back channel at GameStop. It wasn’t quite a midnight launch, but it felt like one when I finally plugged it in.

Then came the Wii U. I lined up for that launch too, more out of tradition than necessity, and with far less fanfare. I remember walking out with the system, eager to see what Nintendo had in store. The answer, it turned out, was ZombiU. Still, I was there on launch day, and that counts for something.

The last real midnight launch for me was the PlayStation 4. It was 2013, and I had become a bit more organized about these things. I preordered mine, like an adult. My brother and I drove out together to our local GameStop. It was quieter than previous launches but still buzzing with energy. Everyone was there for the same reason, and there was something comforting in that shared excitement. We got our consoles, came home, and stayed up playing “Killzone” and “Resogun.” I remember thinking it might be the last time I’d ever do something like that.

And in a way, it was - at least for a while.

The PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X arrived not with a line but with a tracking number. COVID-19 made midnight launches impossible, and I had entered a new phase of life anyway. Both consoles showed up on my porch courtesy of UPS. I opened the boxes in the middle of the day while my toddler watched from her highchair. There were no crowds, no chaos, and only a little bit of excitement.

People waiting outside for the Switch (2017) (source)

Convenient? Absolutely. But I missed the experience. The cold air. The countdown. The quiet conversations with strangers in the parking lot about what games you were getting and how you planned to stay awake until morning.

And now, with the Switch 2 on the horizon, something funny is happening. I’m planning to line up at Best Buy again. It’s still going to be a midnight launch. This time, I’ll be there for eight minutes, just long enough to pick up my preorder. No lottery. No frantic guessing. Still, there is a kind of full-circle comfort in it. I’ll be back where it started, doing something that used to be routine, now wrapped in nostalgia. I even have my two older kids insisting that I wake them up and bring them to the midnight launch. Maybe next time, kids!

I know I won’t stay up all night playing anymore. I’ll take the console home, probably let it sit in the box until the kids go to bed. I’ll update it, download a few games, and maybe, if I’m lucky, get an hour or two of peace to see what it can do. But that’s okay.

Because for me, it was never just about the console. It was about the energy around it, the people, the places, the anticipation. It was about being part of a larger community, even briefly. A little family of caffeinated nerds in the cold, waiting for the future to start.

And if the future takes eight minutes and a QR code to access these days, that’s just fine. I’ll be there anyway.

A midnight launch at Gamestop (source)