PS3 European/Australasian launch dates confirmed

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..