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Sony have announced that Playstation 3 will release in Europe this March the 23rd, with one million consoles available at launch, roughly a quarter of those said to be for the UK alone. The same date applies to those of us in Australia and New Zealand. And according to at least one source, the million consoles are spread amongst Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Australia.

European gamers with possibly more money than sense and presumably a large amount of patience to go with that can expect to pay either 425 GBP or 599 Euros for the 60GB version of Sony's latest console, with the smaller 20GB variant only becoming available later on. Irish gamers will however pay a steep price of €630 for the 60GB console due to the 21% VAT in the Republic of Ireland. Australasians shall pay around A$1000 or NZ $1200.

Sony have stated 30 titles will be available at launch. Sadly, they're all the same ones out for the US and Japanese launch mostly plus ports from last-gen consoles and the occasional Generic Sports Game 2007 title thrown in for good measure.

Europe seemed to have been struck hardest by the various delays of PS3's launch, from the Spring 2006 issues with the blu-ray copyright, followed by the manufacturing issues with the blu-ray devices themselves led to Europe's launch being delayed, Sony claiming that the 27 nations of the European Union plus those who have had the brains to stay out of aforementioned corrupt political union presented a logitically more complex launch area than the US or Japan, and to avert failure in all three markets chose to delay the PAL launch. Though having shipped 2 million consoles to Japan and the US, failure is hardly what has occurred. The only troubles are those ones sitting unsold and the fact Wii gained a 700,000 sale head start last December alone. On the bright side, at least it wasn't 60 consoles (425 GB variants) available priced at £1,000,000...

Sources: The BBC, Wikipedia and the Herald Sun..

This post has been edited by Tiddles on 11th February 2007 23:20

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"Only the dead have seen the end of their quotes being misattributed to Plato."
-George Santayana

"The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here..."
-Abraham Lincoln, prior to the discovery of Irony.

I didn't expect it would be so soon. I used to think I wouldn't buy it, and if I was going to buy it, it wouldn't be until months after the launch. Today, I'm going up to the bank to put money aside for the 23rd . After hearing figures in the regions of £600, £450 isn't too bad considering it's the gateway to MGS4. I may possibly just wait for the 20gb one though because I know, from others' experience, that 60gb isn't needed in a console. Thanks for the enlightenment.

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Scepticism, that dry rot of the intellect, had not left one entire idea in his mind.

Me on the Starcraft.

$1000? I'll pass...for a few years. Why any would spend that much on a console is beyond me, but there's always people silly enough to pay that much .

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I'm a general, not some opera floozy!

*insert humourous observation here*

£425 isn't too bad, but I don't think I shall get one at launch, I will probably wait a few months when I have a better chance at getting to grips with it, plus there will be more games available to choose from, which is never a bad thing. Not to mention the fact I can see during that time just how good PS3 is, as a close friend plans to purchase it ASAP.

From what I recall the 20GB one has quite a few things missing, so I'll stick with the 60GB when / if I get one.

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'Let that be a lesson to all oppressive vegetable sellers.'

Is it true that there won't be any costs for using the internet on it for gaming, downloading etc? If that were the case, you could look at it like you were prepaying 5-6 years worth of internet. Also I heard (bear with me) that the 20gb one misses out on other stuff the 60 has. As an example, there's no HDML (?) port let alone a cable. Is this accurate?

This post has been edited by sweetdude on 28th January 2007 09:22

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Scepticism, that dry rot of the intellect, had not left one entire idea in his mind.

Me on the Starcraft.

It gives free access to the Playstation network, yes. Doesn't really mean free internet access, and IIRC, the other consoles don't charge for access to their gaming networks either.

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"Only the dead have seen the end of their quotes being misattributed to Plato."
-George Santayana

"The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here..."
-Abraham Lincoln, prior to the discovery of Irony.

I'm certain the Xbox charges you. You have to buy a subscription to play games on Xbox Live. And, well, I did say "gaming, downloading". I can't think of any other reason to have the internet on a console. Unless I really want to find out the weather the hard way.

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Scepticism, that dry rot of the intellect, had not left one entire idea in his mind.

Me on the Starcraft.