PS3 launch date set for Europe, Africa, Middle East and Australasia at last!

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Thursday, 25 January 2007 17:04

Your IT - Entertainment

The final piece of the next-gen puzzle will fall into place on March 23rd, when the ‘rest of the world’ will finally be able to purchase Sony’s 60Gb gaming, entertaining, web browsing and Linux capable extravaganza, the PS3!

In around 8 weeks, the PS3 will effective be available worldwide, and the next-gen console battle can finally get underway on a worldwide basis as determined by global sales. 1 million PS3 consoles are due to be launched into the market over a ‘launch period’ that starts on March 23, although there’s no word yet on when the ‘launch period’ ends and we are in an era of general availability as we are with the Xbox 360.

This event will pave the way towards what should be an enormous amount of activity from all three console players this year, as they have big goals to achieve, culminating in the big Christmas season/end-of-year battle of 2007, after which 2008 begins and we go through the wash cycle once again, half way through the next-gen console battle on the journey words the PS4, Wii 2 and Xbox 720, or whatever they will be called.

But before we go too far into the future, the PS3 has to arrive for the rest of the world first, and Sony are keen to trumpet its imminent arrival. David Reeves, President of SCEE said, “Following the hugely successful launches of PS3 in Japan and North America, we are absolutely delighted to be able to bring significant numbers of PS3 to the SCEE territories. To be able to launch with over 30 titles across every genre shows that this is our strongest launch line-up in the history of PlayStation, and is what PlayStation fans in Europe have been crying out for.”

No doubt we’ll see a vast array of software releases, building a solid software library with plenty of big hits to show off in time for the Christmas season, with as many titles as possible in between. There’ll be massive displays at the big game and ‘home show’ expo’s around the world in the key markets. Advertising will continue in the usual mix of TV, print, cinema, online and new media advertising and attempts to create successful viral marketing games that are truly worthy of sending on to friends.

No doubt there will also be much promotion of each console’s online capabilities of gaming, entertainment, shopping and more, especially as all three consoles now offer online as standard.

Given that no-one but Sony really knows how many consoles will actually be available from March 23, customers in ‘the rest of the world’ wanting to buy could well find themselves in the same kind of queuing and delays that took place in the US and Japan, at least on March 23 and a little while thereafter.

After all, while there will be one million units in the initial launch, they all won’t arrive on day 1. Still, more consoles are on the way, and Sony will want to build tens of millions of PS3s and sell every one they can make, so issues of supply will go away soon enough. After all, reports in the US now say there’s plenty of stock on the shelves, with one reason they’re not flying off perhaps because off the credit card bills still being paid off from Christmas!

So what about the 20Gb PS3, what's with all the pricing differences, what are the games and plenty of other interesting things besides? Read on to page 2 for more!