Being an Australian, I have been eagerly waiting for details of the launch to be announced. When I saw the announcement over at Planet GameCube, I could not help but get just a little excited!

But my excitement soon turned to bitter dissapointment.

But first, let's start with some good news. Similiar to the European launch, 20 games will accompany the launch, and the Cube will be available in two colours, indigo and black. But as far as good news goes this is it.

To begin the run of horror, we'll start with the date - 17th of May 2002. A whole two weeks later than the Euro launch. Why it takes longer to release it here is anyones guess. As most smart continents should do, we have One Language which should mean that there are no delays in language formatting right? Obviously this isn't the case. Some dimwit has decided that it now takes longer to write out an instruction booklet in 20 different languages, rather than 1 single language

Nintendo don't care about us enough to set a RRP, they won't be setting one. It's expected to sell for around $400 Aus, but sellers have the right to do what they want with the price. What does this mean? Well instead of having the comfort of knowing how much our long awaited console is going to cost, and we are probably going to have to waste our precious time searching around for the best price, instead of heading on over to the nearest Big W and picking one up at what we know will be a good price. But wait guys, there's STILL more.

Tell me, how many launch units were you expecting us to have? 300 000? 200 000? Even 150 000? Forget it, 50 000 units for the launch period. This means there will probably only be 20 000 available for launch day - And no, there is not meant to be another 0. 50 000, thats it.

This, to be honest guys, is utterly disgraceful. I cannot express how annoyed I am with Nintendo Australia, for crying out loud we don't even have a damn official site anymore.

My advice is to preorder ASAP. Do it now. And it is also time to face the now inevitable - Xbox is gonna kick our arse no matter what down here, that's all there is to it. And don't even mention the PS2...