Sony confirmed the European PlayStation 3 launch details last night. I almost completely forgot until I saw some other websites rubbishing the stupidly inflated British price.
So it’s official, the PlayStation 3 will launch in the UK and across civilised Europe on 23rd March with a price tag of £425 (or €599 for Euro using people).
That takes the piss a bit, surely? As UKR have mentioned, the $599 US price translates to just over £300, while the Japanese Â¥60,000 price converts to £250… so why do Sony expect us to pay £425 in Britain? That’s 70% more than the original Japanese price.
Apparently 300,000 units will be available in the UK for launch. That’s awfully ambitious of Sony.
As well as all that, around 30 titles will be available for launch, Resistence: Fall of Man (generic FPS!), Ridge Racer 7 (Riiddddddddge Raaaaaacer!!) and MotorStorm (must be shit, made in Britain) being the reported highlights.
We’ll get our own localised PlayStation Network online thing too, which is actually not as dull as it sounds, because you could buy an arcade port of the rather good Tekken: Dark Resurrection in Japan for just £9. Expect to pay double that for the download to get shipped over here though.
Possibly the most intesting thing to come from this news, is the announcement that only the ‘premium’ 60GB PlayStation 3 model (which also sports WiFi and HDMI) will be available in Europe. That’s not actually that interesting, but at least it shows some recognition from Sony that selling stupidly crippled ‘cheaper’ versions of a product which lack half the features you wanted, isn’t such a great plan.
If you want, there’s still time to pre-order from Play.com for a mere £549.99. Or just pick one up on eBay for less than the original price a few weeks after launch. I’ll be waiting to get one from Hong Kong (yes, Hong Kong & Taiwan got their own PlayStation 3’s launched months before us) where they currently cost just £240.