European PlayStation 3 is launched… with mixed results
Writen by walking leaf on Friday, 23 of March , 2007 at 4:13 pm, ,
After months of delays, the next generation console from Sony is finally launched in Europe with both cheers and indifferences.
In the UK, the most successful launch took place in central London in the early hours of Friday morning with the news that the first one hundred people queuing up to buy the PlayStation 3 at Virgin Megastore received a brand-new 42-inch HD LCD television set for free.
Those lucky people – who have been waiting outside the shop for over 36 hours – were rewarded with a grand gift from Sony (valued around £2,000). That was a very nice gesture from the Japanese company to do this, you would think, but some believe it was a desperate marketing ploy to generate good publicity after weeks of negative press in the media…
The same can’t be said for the rest of Europe however. In France and Germany for example, many stores opened late into the night but there was a lack of interest from the crowd.
In fact, rival Microsoft ‘gate crashed’ the PlayStation event with publicity stunts including a boat decked out in Xbox 360 logos! And even more bizarre, free chairs were given out to those people waiting in line with a URL address printed onto it. That website pointed to a cheeky message that Sony are late into the next generation race…
Nevertheless, Sony is pleased to find out that early sales of the PlayStation 3 are selling faster than the predecessor model, the PlayStation 2.
Sony believes that the combination of a high-definition Blu-ray player, online capabilities and gaming powered by the Cell processor will convince gamers to spend £425 (€599) on the machine.
“High definition is very important to people,” said Ray Maguire, head of Sony Computer Entertainment in the UK.
“A lot of people have bought flat panel TVs and they want content to go on it and PlayStation 3 is one of the few places they can get that kind of experience.”
The battle between the three consoles (PS3, Wii and Xbox 360) has arrived in Europe. Let’s see who will come out strong.
Category: Videogames
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Comment by Yink
Made Saturday, 24 of March , 2007 at 5:04 pm
oh they look so kewl
