The owner of the Akihabara, Tokyo computer store which held an RTX 50 product release lottery has issued a sweeping apology to customers, neighbors, and everyone else who got caught up in the chaos last week. Unitcom, which operates the PC Studio chain, seemed particularly remorseful over the reports of personal injuries, and damage to a neighboring kindergarten's fences and signage in its press release (Japanese language, machine translated). The chaos and carnage occurred during the firm's ill-feted RTX 5090 and 5080 lottery sales release day event.
幼稚園侵入してるやつエグいってwwwwまじで捕まってくれ pic.twitter.com/Bww5uP4oXpJanuary 30, 2025
Click 'see more' to watch Tommy P's video showing the crowd chaos at PC Studio's RTX 5090 and 5080 lotto event day.
PC Studio sought to distribute limited stocks of the freshly released Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 and 5080 graphics cards fairly by giving customers a chance to buy raffle tickets. The raffle ticket sale was to commence at 10.20 am on Friday, January 31, with only those already in line at that time having a chance to trade a winning ticket with the opportunity to buy a Blackwell GeForce graphics card. The raffle was to be drawn at 11.00 am, and the winners could then enter to claim their rights to an RTX 50 in-store.
The best-laid plans of mice and men, and computer store retailers, often go awry, though, and this is very true of the PC Studio lotto. The PCs and parts retail chain had prepared a staff of about 25 people to marshal the crowd and process sales but unfortunately, the crowd was far bigger than expected resulting in (machine translated) descriptions of the event including words like – turmoil, severe damage, and uproar. Unitcom / PC Studio ended its blog post by repeating its regret – "We apologize deeply," it wrote.
We've looked around for more details of the chaotic graphics card lottery event, and understand that at least 400 people tried to get in the raffle ticket sales queue. Tokyo Game Life shared a few images of the scenes (while pondering how a Nintendo Switch 2 launch would fare). However, Tommy P's video, embedded top, might provide a better view of the chaos.
Of course, unruly personal behavior is entirely the responsibility of any member of the crowd who indulges in it. Unitcom / PC Studio has done the right thing in apologizing to customers and neighbors, though. Some will also lay blame at the door of Nvidia, for its overly hyped and woefully undersupplied Blackwell consumer graphics card retail debut.
If you are in the market for an RTX 5080, please keep an eye on our Where to buy the Nvidia RTX 5080 in the US guide, and avoid the rowdy crowds by shopping online.
