Saw this on PS3 Pad and thought it was relevant to help people decide where they need to spend their money for the rest of this year. Quite a few games are still waiting for their launch dates to be confirmed – though they are expected to be released prior to Christmas.
The PlayStation 3 has been out for a number of months now in the UK and Europe, and around 8 months in the US.
This post contains a list of PS3 games planned for release in PAL regions for the rest of this year:
August 2007
SingStar Next Gen PS3
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2
Warhawk
Madden NFL 2008
September 2007
FIFA 2008
John Woo presents Stranglehold
Lair
Heavenly Sword
October 2007
Hannah Montana: Spotlight World Tour
The Getaway 3
Grand Theft Auto IV
Pro Evolution Soccer 2008
Eye of Judgment
November 2007
Assassin’s Creed
Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction
Army of Two
Time Crisis 4
Gran Turismo 5 Prologue
Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune
Unconfirmed date (sometime in 2007)
211
Alive
Alliance: The Silent War
Battlefield: Bad Company
Bladestorm: The 100 years war
The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena
Colin McRae: Dirt
FEAR 2
Haze
Kane & Lynch: Dead men
SOCOM: Confrontation
Turning Point: Fall of Liberty
Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground
TimeShift
Unreal Tournament 3
The PS3 is one day old now in the UK and across Europe and has been a succesful launch for Sony.
Many European countries have sold out of their allocations, and in the UK, the biggest European games console market, a massive dent in the 200,000 consoles available has been made.
Some people may say it hasn’t been a success because the machine hasn’t sold out, but Sony have got their launch allocation spot on. If they wanted to sell out they could easily have with-held some of their allocation or redistributed to other European countries. As it is customers can visit stores and get hold of their PS3’s. For now.
The PlayStation 3 is not only the world’s most powerful games machine, but also the world’s most expensive. To make such an impact as it has is impressive for two major reasons.
1. The machine is costly. It is priced at a level that is around the average for a monthly mortgage or a couple of months car payments.
2. It has been released away from the Christmas ‘must-buy’ period. Both the Xbox 360 and the Wii (for which there was significantly less initial stock available) were launched just before Christmas.
The features and capabilities of the machine are so great that Sony are making a significant loss on the actual machine. It has the technology that could typically be priced at around double its price tag.
UK stock will sell out shortly, just as it did with the PSP. It is an amazing machine full of possibilites, extremely user friendly and can be attached to pretty much every gadget you can think. I have found no problems yet with backwards compatibility with my PS2 game collection, and I have hooked up my iPod (the PS3 easily stored all the songs and album covers, and videos). I have attached my PSP, have transferred files from USB sticks, have copied pictures from my camera’s SD cards, transferred items from my mobile phone, played some of the most amazing games I have seen, downloaded Gran Turismo for free (cheers Sony), downloaded all the demo’s, all the Blu-Ray trailers, hooked the PS3 wirelessly to the internet and had a couple of games of Motorstorm online (I am rubbish so far) and played Call of Duty 3 online (twice I captured the flag!).
All very very simple, yet such a powerful machine.
It’s a signficant step forward for home entertainment and will power the High Definition move in the UK. After a few hours of watching Blu-Ray clips I am already struggling to get back to watching, what I like to call, Low Definition.
Sony has finally found it’s footing, after it’s European launch. The only question now will be – how long before it outnumbers the Xbox 360. I’ll give it 9 months.
So, there’s around 50 hours until the PS3 lands, a bit later for my delivery on Friday and I can’t wait. I am truly excited. Many stores have been told by the Police NOT to hold midnight launches because of security concerns. Virgin Megastore in London however will be opened at midnight.
However, a report out in the past few days has confirmed that around 73% of PS2 and PSone titles will work on your PS3.
The full list can be accessed at the following official Sony webpage
However, many of these games that are even on the list have problems present. Worryingly, it tends to be the more recent games – obviously where programmers have begun to get ‘the most’ out of the PlayStation 2. Football fans be afraid, don’t ditch your PS2 yet, because most of the FIFA games released in the last 5 years (and Pro Evo Soccer) will run, but with MAJOR technical issues. Doesn’t sound good. Enjoy Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas – or the new Vice City Stories – best have your PS2 handy then.
The current software version for the PS3 is v1.6 and although slight improvements are expected for some games, the fact remains that Sony have pretty much left European users high and dry. The US version offered nearly around 98% backwards compatibility. 73% for European users is just another kick in the nuts, along with the price tag – and I’m a PS3 fan. Imagine what the neutral will be feeling.
Anyway, I can’t wait. I am sticking by my original premise that the PS3 will sell out very quickly after launch. I hope significant pre-order problems don’t occur and I hope if you’ve ordered yours then its on the way.
Speaking to an old friend from Uni yesterday (he works for Sony down in London) – let’s call him Mr. X.
He had some interesting things to tell me. We all know that Casino Royale on Blu-Ray will be the free gift for the first 500,000 PS3 owners to register, a very similar scheme to the Spiderman UMD that arrived after registering your PSP.
He also told me the names of a couple of big companies who have oversold the PlayStation 3. Big, high street companies. There have been 162,000 pre-orders of the PS3 console with all online suppliers. Only a couple of companies have yet to start pre-ordering, in fact I can only think of Comet who are due to start in the next couple of days.
Amazon have had problems with their ordering system and have been strangely releasing pre-orders for around 4 hours at a time, stopping the pre-orders, and then analysing their stats.
If you haven’t yet pre-ordered your PS3 (shame on you) then you may not notice that some UK retailers have already oversold the machine. However, on the retailers websites – where it used to say ‘delivery ON the 23rd March’ the wording has changed to ‘delivery FROM the 23rd March’. Clever huh…
There are only around 15-20,000 pre-orders left. The rest (around 20,000) will be distributed to stores for delivery on the day. Bear in mind that many of these stores (such as Game) have been taking in-store pre-orders so their initial stock is pretty much wiped out.
Stay in the know. My mate in Sony has been supplying information for some websites such as www.ps3pad.com.
(I am really looking forward to the online gaming – I will be supplying my PS3 online name on here after launch date if anybody thinks they are up to the challenge of giving me a game !! )
The PlayStation 3 is the most pre-ordered games console in history according to Gian Luzio, head of Play, one of the internet’s online retailers.
According to figures from his company pre-orders for the PS3 are out-stripping the pre-orders that happened with the Wii and XBox 360 by 6 times.
This will be great news for Sony – who shocked European gamers when they pushed back the PS3 launch date 4 months behind the US and Japan. The European market is the most important video console market in the world in terms of units sold and game sales, however it appears that the threat of the XBox 360 maintaining a significant market position was greater in the US and Japan, and Sony’s move to focus on the US and Japan first was a key strategic decision.
PS3’s are still not readily available in stores in the US, and after the initial launch allocation across Europe next month it is expected that supplies won’t be replenished significantly until late summer and that Christmas could be extremely difficult for wannabe-PS3 owners.
Amazon have sold out of PlayStation’s 3 – in total their website was active for around 10 hours over two days. Woolworths and Argos are near to their limit for pre-orders and are expected to pull sales from their site this coming week.
Been a busy busy boy today so will skip the update till tomorrow, but just wanted to share some pics I got sent today in my email.
I don’t want to contribute to the impending war of PS3 and XBox 360 owners – Sony and Microsoft are going to have their own hands full but the proof of this posts’ title is here.
Readers to this blog will know I have been struggling on my choice of games for the PS3 – which I eagerly await.
A breakthrough was made today when I finally decided on my first purchase – though still haven’t been informed about the best supplier.
Formula One 06 looks like a great racer. I have had an affection for the Formula One games ever since the Amiga Version which arrived on 2 (or was it 4) magnificent floppy disks, was coded by Geoff Crammond, and was technically superb.
I went on a hunt on YouTube (youtube videos often struggle to give you a good sense of the game) but this one was good and made my decision for me.
Wishing I had waited the extra day or so and actually ordered the package with Woolworths that came with this game. Could have saved myself about £15. Serves me right for trying to jump the gun.
Call of Duty 3 is going to be one of those types of games I just love. I really didn’t even need to see the trailer but I did (it is here by the way!)
It looks beautiful. A real graphical extravaganza for the PlayStation 3. A bit of smoke and a bit of flames are the kind of thing that should look remarkably different on the next gen consoles. All those ‘real world’ effects that have always been difficult to animate.
I’ve have officially placed it top of the ‘Wanted’ list. If anybody wants to save me the bother and send me the cheapest internet price then I would be forever grateful.
Back to the UK pre-order frenzy which is really starting to pick up pace and both Woolworths and Choices UK have unveiled their pre-order offers. Woolworths were brilliant during the Wii pre-order campaign – pretty much all pre-orders were fulfilled as they stuck to agreed limits (a bit like Argos in the last post). Choices UK also have a number of great packages for people who haven’t pre-ordered yet.
You can keep up to date fully, faster than my blog anyway, on one of the many PS3 pre-order pages on the web.
With the UK release date of the PlayStation 3 heading our way, UK retailers are beginning to offer customers the ability to pre-order their brand spanking new Play Station 3.
Many retailers are offering first come first served offers. You pre-order and then if you’re in the first bunch then you get your hands on the machine. A risk but maybe one worth taking for some people.
However, UK retailer Argos has now added it’s pre-ordering facilities to its website. However, the retailer has already been informed how many of the machines Sony will be shipping to the company, and is taking pre-orders up to that limit ONLY. It says that this method will ensure that everyone who completes a pre-order will be guaranteed their PlayStation 3. As soon as the number of pre-orders exceed their purchase stock they will remove the ability.
It’s a sensible idea, and Argos has tended in the past to receive a fairly substantial allocation of units. I have read articles suggesting they may receive as many as 8% of all UK PlayStation 3’s for launch. I personally like their method, avoiding not only disappointment amongst consumers, but also plenty of problems for their customer service department/bad press etc.
Either way. If you want a PlayStation – I mean really really want one, then they may just be the choice for you.
For what it’s worth – I’ve just ordered mine with them.
The Playstation 3 will be arriving in Europe on November 3rd. Unfortunately this isn’t some major reversal in decisions by Sony but a display at the What Hi-Fi? Sound and Vision show at Novotel London West Hotel and Convention Centre in Hammersmith, London.
The event runs from the 3rd to the 5th of November but some of you lucky souls who make the trip will get to see and play the PlayStation 3 at first hand.
Tickets are £13 and you can get hold of one from the What Hi-fi? website.
We expect pictures galore of your smiling mugs at the PlayStation 3 stand.
