The Nintendo Wii [fr] was finally launched in Paris (and all over Europe) last night, and most of the reports are coming from the Champs-Elysees, where the Virgin Megastore had approximately 200 unreserved Wii consoles and Fnac had a reported 300-400 unreserved Wii consoles.

Hundreds of people (some reports number about 1000 people) lined up within barricades (as early as noon yesterday) to get their chance at buying one of the shiny, white, coveted boxes for 249 euros at midnight last night... 00h01 to be precise.

If Parisist's math is correct, that means that around 124,500 to 149,400 euros were spent last night between midnight and 2am for consoles alone. Let's not forget the accessories and the games...

JeuxFrance.com was on the scene [fr] with a massive amount of photos, and reports that the Xbox launch did not yield as big of a turnout as the Wii did last night. They've also got photos of DJs, singing, and tons of press to cover the mega-gaming moment of the year.

So what are you going to do if you didn't get your Wii last night? ZDNet is reporting [fr] that 400,000 Wiis will be sent to France between its launch and March 2007, and according to Stephan Bole of Nintendo France, there should not be a shortage [fr]. Parisist will believe that when we see it, but we can only guess that the pressure will be off as soon as 25 December passes.

Parisist is also guessing that between today and then end of the year, there will be a lot of broken wine glasses around Paris. We hope that doesn't extend to broken televisions. Be sure to read your Wii Safety manuals, or if your geeky loved one has sweaty palms, maybe the perfect gift for Christmas should also include a handy-dandy skid proof Wii glove?

Until then, Wii we will wait. And will have to console ourselves with watching these guys at JeuxFrance.com [fr] open their Wii package piece by piece, as if we were unwrapping it ourselves:

Photos and video by JeuxFrance.com.

If you have photos from last nights launch, then contribute your photo to Parisist by tagging it with "parisist" on flickr, or submitting them to the Parisist Pool.