PS3 launch a success

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.

PS3 nearly here – but games compatibility a problem

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

http://faq.eu.playstation.com/bc/

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.

Will I sleep on Thursday night? Not a chance.

PS3 a sell out in the UK. You heard it here first

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 !! )

Retailer offers guarantee for PlayStation 3 pre-orders

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.

Order your PlayStation 3 with Argos here or keep up to date with other UK retailers plans here

PS3 Billboards appear

The Playstation 3 advertising campaign has swung in to gear with the billboard campaign beginning to take shape.

This first billboard has been spotted by Kotaku in Los Angeles.

It’s good to see Sony won’t be using that ‘Spiderman 2′ font for all it’s advertising – these images seem in line with the predictions back in September on the ps3pad.com Playstation 3 forum.

Money wasted as far as I am concerned for all you Sony shareholders. Surely the purpose of advertising is to attract customers to a product. After day 0 there isn’t going to be any ‘product’ left. It’s a tricky one though – Sony has to herald the arrival of it’s most important product in a decade, but it’s going to suffer some very bad press towards the end of November and the Christmas season.

Mind you, who was it that said any advertising is good advertising.

PlayStation 3 – Why bother advertising it?

So let’s get this straight, we all know only 500,000 PS3’s are going to be available for launch date yeah? And that their going to be on eBay and the like left right and centre. In fact if there is a PS3 left in a shop 24 hours after launch then I will be surprised.

So….

I was astonished to read that Sony are planning on spending $30 million on creating 15,000 store demo kiosks for the holiday season in North America! This is 5 times as many as were used when the Playstation 2 was launched.

There is going to be 15,000 PS3’s sitting in store’s that will have no PS3’s to actually sell, and Europe is left to wait until March 2007 for the machine even though it is the biggest video games market in the world. No wonder there was no big surprise when Sony admitted it doesn’t mind making European’s wait.

I think the marketing men at Sony have been, well how shall I put it, spending too much time playing PlayStation….!