Black Friday, the biggest shopping bonanza of the year. Virtually everyone has the day off and with retail stores doing sales on top of sales, going out to the store can be a mad house, especially if rumors are to be believed.

Go Nintendo has it from GameStop sources that the console will be launching the week of Black Friday. Based on Nintendo’s release pattern, that should put the Wii U in stores Sunday the 18th of November. Which gives Nintendo almost a full week and a half of mad house sales for their new console.

This release schedule makes sense both in Nintendo’s historical context, as well as in relation to third-party rumors that have been cropping up since E3. The major question that needs to be answered now is how well will the new system do, can the Wii U match the hysteria created by the original Wii?

It is had to guess with out the price point information just yet, but it is a safe bet to assume that the Wii U will sell out of its first shipment pretty quickly. What made the Wii such a phenomenon was that it couldn’t stay in stock for months. In January it was still hard to get a Wii, which was due in large part to a pretty genius strategy by Nintendo. Most stores would only get shipments of three or four systems, perpetually keeping shelves bare.

To recreate that Nintendo had better hope they can keep the Wii U price point low, and the demand high.

Stay connected to The Flickcast for any new updates on the launch of the Wii U.

One of the major contributing factors to the PS3’s inability to gain initial traction during it’s launch was the fact that it came out to late. In fact, it hit shelves almost a full year after the XBOX 360, allowing Microsoft to convert many first adopters before Sony even had a product in the market place.

It looks like Sony might not let that happen again.

The Wall Street Journal reports that a source close to Sony indicates that the new console should be hitting store shelves in 2013. In addition to the relatively close release window, the source also confirmed that the system will not be a download only console as previously hinted:

Sony decided against a download-only model largely because Internet connections are too inconsistent around the world, one of the people familiar with Sony’s thinking said. Because game files are large, customers in countries where Internet connections are relatively slow would be hobbled by a requirement to download games, the person said.

Sony won the first two rounds it their console wars because they were on the cutting edge in home entertainment, not just gaming. The PS1 was the best CD player in just about any home it was in, the PS2 was the first DVD player for an incredibly large number of people. Even the PS3 found later success as a premiere Blu-Ray player, not just a gaming console. So Sony should be looking into the next step of home entertainment for the PS4.