"Get it while it's hot!" - You can still guarantee a PS3 for launch day, and we're less than a week out.
Does everyone remember how the Wii launch went in the UK? You couldn't pre-order with a guarantee for more than a month before the actual product launch. Many people both in the States and in the EU still can't get a hold of the elusive console. And now, with the PS3 launch merely days away, we're happy to say
you won't find the same problem.
That's right, several High Street chains are still offering PS3 pre-orders with a guarantee for launch day, which is only this Friday (March 23rd). And for once, this isn't a knock on Sony - the issue isn't a lack of pre-orders, but a well-supplied launch. Sony is stocking the EU with 1 million consoles for Friday, and 300,000 of those units are dedicated to the UK. Retailers everywhere are breathing a sigh of relief.
To put that 300,000 in perspective, Nintendo sold only 105,000 units on its first weekend in the UK before stock ran out. Though official release figures have not been disclosed by Ninty, one could easily expect that this is all the units that were available. One retailer drew a comparison between the 25 units provided by Sony versus the two given by Nintendo.
Pre-order figures for the PS3 have been quite successful according to several retailers, in fact more successful than the Wii. At least a part of that may be because of the wider availability of units - the ability to guarantee you're getting one makes the pre-order process a little easier to swallow. Particularly when there are some people still waiting on their Wii!
If you're interested in grabbing a console on launch day, it's still recommended that you go pre-order beforehand - just to make sure you've got one with your name on it. However, by the sound of it the launch should be pretty smooth sailing.
Do you have a thought on the PS3 launch? Let us hear about it
in our forums.
33 Comments
Discuss in the forums Replyyou can hardly compare the ps3's demand to that of the wii, people actually want wiis :)
Now if it was £299...
Lol, I love the "Or go to Sainsburys, buy some bread and some bacon and save yourself about 422 quid" comment.
Certainly a very different take.
not only were the consoles shifting but the wiimotes and chuka's. People were easily playing £250minimum per console bundle. I think mostly every person i have spoken too only one wants a PS3 but thats after he splits the cost with a mate.
blu-ray movies on me plasma will be ace.
P.S. Yes I did deliberately hold down shift while typing the whole of 'ps3'
I would've though they'd have a lot of stock anyway seeing as they've had months of time to get the PS3 into full scale production.
We should be getting even MORE than 300k units with the wait time we've had, even if this fact is true, I'm pretty sure more than 300,000 pre-orders were placed for the Wii.
I'm happy to wait for Game or another high street retailer to have one available which I doubt will be hard. Had this been released b4 xmas then the demand would have been higher but little johnny isn't going to have £425+ spent on him for easter is he?
Perhaps you can learn from those who have already purchased the plastic shiny bricks over here and not buy the POS, I mean PS3.
Uhm, PAL unit, not a w@nk yank unit. Different, hence not leftovers...
Yep we will. We are getting them just about the time the firmware, the net service and some decent games are on the horizon. Ta! ;)
Apart from the fact that EU consoles don't have the Emotion Engine CPU anymore, so US/JAP consoles released on launch are in fact better than what EU will get.
Given there are no worthwhile games for the PS3 why not save yourself £325 and buy a PS2 from Amazon for £99?
At the games console exhibition at the British Science museum they were exhibiting a Wii and a PS3. Interestingly the people playing the PS3 seemed rather bored whereas the people playing the Wii were having a whale of a time :D For the record the exhibition rocked, Sinclairs, Commodores, Famicoms, NeoGeos, 486s, NESs, SNESs, MegaDrives, Jaguars, Dreamcasts, Playstations, XBoxs, etc... were all there!
Depends on your definition of better. I play virtually *no* PS2 games now (apart from SF series, Marvel, etc [capcom]) so, the potential lack of compatibility to me is negligible. And even so, the confirmed list on the official site is 1700+ i think? And I think that included any of the games i wanted to play (MGS, SF2, etc) so..
Maybe they were -- I won't be. Besides, I don't care much for the Wii. Sure it's quite novel, but it isn't "next gen" for my liking. The games that I have played were fun, for certain, but system sellers? No. They were "party games" or "neat-for-the-first-time" but I wouldnt keep playing them. Mario galaxy *might* be when it hits. No games on it that have me wow'd, unlike the 360/PS3. So, apples and oranges, mate. I'm looking forward to the PS3.
As for the pricing.. well, that's a whole different issue. Rip-off Britain, etc... :(
That's exactly my hangup. I do kinda want one but it's just out of my budget. That and the fact imma have to get a TV with HDCP and HDMI too
Sure, the initial launch saw overnight lines and all that jazz, but then again ebay saw most of those preordered boxes.
If it's not too late to preorder and you planned on getting a PS3 anyways, then this is good news for you. While I don't think I'll ever get a PS3, if you've got the cash for it, then go for it. If the price was a lot lower, then people would be a lot less critical over it.
I totally agree with you mmorgue. I already got into a big argument on it here http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=130240.
I also agree. My friend has the Wii and many of the games were fun to play the first day or two and then they got boring, and the graphics are soooooooo baaaaddd! My other friend has a first-gen PS3 and a 1080p LCD and damn did Resistance look good! The same goes for Casino Royale in HD. I personally think if you have the needed hardware purchased like a 5.1+ Home Theater and an HDTV, then the PS3 will be hard to pass up. And just like I said in my past arguments: wait for the price to drop if you think it's too expensive; people with the money, the desire and the need will buy em anyways, or be like me and find a friend who got one. Heheeheee
Darty is causing a chain reaction. They announced they would start selling at 7pm today. So Media World ran an advert to showing the sale date as 9am! GameStop might be forced to start selling early now, just to stay in competition. Gone is the day of the Midnight launch event, and "Street Dates".
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=23664
Yeah I hear you, I'm not excited about the PS3 & still use my PS2 for the rare occasion when I do play a game nowadays.
I was just replying to the troll which was bashing US PS3's...
And before anyone says they're different consoles, they are only different in terms of the output. 99% of the console (including all the parts hard to manufacture) are the same.
ALSO consider that when sony realised they weren't selling in the us and japan, they would have stopped producing those consoles and concentrated on making the european launch a success.
Just don't try playing most of your previous gen games on it.
Story at http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/03/21/ps3_palaver_continues/
That doesn't make sense. What does units not being sold in region X have to do with a multitude of units available at region Y's launch? What you're implying is that the "leftovers" from NTSC are being shipped over to the EU, retromodded to remove the emotion engine and then being sold, hence your statement that there's so many left over..? :|
Stopped? Unlikely. Not selling? Perhaps not flying off the shelves but I suspect they are "selling". Sony would be stupid if they stopped producing a product in one region, only to go 110% full steam ahead for another region. *Anything* could happen in the NTSC region to suddenly increase demand (i.e., early release of system seller game, etc) and Sony would be back to a square one scenario of no consoles for demand.
Perhaps they might have *lowered* the units being produced for the NTSC market so that they have greater component yields for the PAL region release (as per your mention of the 99% component similar) which is more likely.
What i meant is that the sales in japan and the US didn't go as well as they expected so they diverted resources from those regions to other regions. Production of the PS3 is slow because of a few components in it that take time to produce, those components are the limiting parts of the production cycle and are the same in all regions.
On a hardware level, the difference between pal and ntsc is very simple and is likely to just be a firmware change, so switching production from the US to the EU market is far more simple than you seem to comprehend.
and of course i didn't mean that they abandoned the US market completely, that would be a stupid mistake even for sony.
I found the whole BBC coverage biased, not once did they say a bad thing about it closest they came was to say 'it may cost a fortune but...'. The I think the BBC where slightly in Sony's pocket here; freebie PS3 to the UK's most popular radio show for Sony's target audience, and all the BBC news coverage showering praise upon the PoS.
I've seen photos of the big Virgin Megastore in London for the midnight launches of the PS3 and Wii. All the PS3 buyers where nicely warm inside the store half the Wii buyers where waiting around the corner outside.
The first person in the PS3 queue arrived at 9pm!
There's a emerging game for PS3 haters, go to argos tap in the PS3 code into the stock cheacker, photo, post online. There's loads still available but the BBC's coverage seems to suggest that you'd be lucky to find one anywhere.