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- Matt Barton
European Playstation 3 release probably underwhelming
Going bananas here... A long time after the release of the Playstation 3 in Japan en the Americas in November 2006, next week the console will be 'introduced' in the European territories. And what an introduction this is, Sony has made a whopping 50,000 ps3 units available for release in the Benelux (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg area). Please note that this is an almost 30.000.000 population. With the enormous amount of units being made available 0.0016 % of the population will be able to obtain one. This is one in 600 people! And the biggest portion (44,000) of those 50,000 units has already been reserved so being able to just buy one will be virtually impossible. Well let me tell you I won't be standing in line waiting to buy my PS3, nor will I be able to buy one anytime soon. It's basically Vapourware and will be for a long time to come.
It sorta reminds me of that slab out of 'a 2001 Space Odyssey', the whole scene with the primates attempting to touch it....The complete European area will be getting 1,000,000 consoles during the initial release. And to make things more interesting only the most expensive version will be on offer!
Due to shortages of various components and blue-ray drives it was impossible to simultaneously release the console world-wide. Research shows that the Playstation 3 is suffering because of the delays as the competition has released their consoles a lot sooner. Er... the Wii officially became available in Europe in December 2006 but I still haven't seen one in the shops, but Microsoft's X360 that was released world wide in 2005 and the latter sells very well, a lot better than the PS3 according to my data.
If only I could go out and buy a Wii.....the games have been in the stores for months, also peripherals can be bought. But the console itself..... Can you imagine those Kids that got a Wii game for Christmas and are still waiting for the console to play it on?
Source: Nu.nl (http://www.nu.nl/news/1009608/55/Playstation_3_schaars_bij_introductie.html)
A little info:
Belgians are divided linguistically into Dutch speakers, called Flemings, and French speakers, called Walloons, with a nominally bilingual population in Brussels. Some 67,000 German speakers live in the east. Approximately 900,000 foreigners reside in Belgium as well. Population density is the second highest in Europe, after the Netherlands. Beglium has 10,276,000 approx residents (2002).
The Netherlands has over 16,067,754 (2002) approx. residents, most people speak Dutch, a few speak Friesian and there are areas where 20% of the population consists of immigrants speaking a variety of languages making it a true multicultural society. Luxembourg has a population a little over 448,569 (2002) approx., languages spoken here are Lutzeburgs, German, French.
Comments
It also stinks that Europe is getting a version of the PS3 without hardware backwards compatibility. Apparently it will take the software emulator quite some time to emulate a decent portion of the software. With all that said, I think Holiday 2007 will be big for the PS3, once stock normalizes worldwide and it gets interesting software available for it. The Wii is also suffering right now from a lack of interesting software (as is the 360, but to a much lesser degree at this point due to time on market (software depth)).
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Bill Loguidice, Managing Director
Armchair Arcade, Inc.
(A PC Magazine Top 100 Website)
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This makes the PAL PS3 a very undesirable object for me and perhaps quite a few others. It's just flabbergasting to see how the Europe console market does get stuck with the short end of the deal yet again. The lack of backwards compatibility doesn't surprise me as we Europeans have no need for backward compatibility, we love black borders and slower game play. In fact why not buy that whole landfill of ET cartridges, paint them white and sell them as Wii consoles, we Europeans will buy them because it's the only thing that is available.
Europeans are a backwards people who only read the websites in their own language, we don't play roleplaying games, we hate shmups, we don't mind being bombarded by ads of movies that we won't be able to see for months, we restrain ourselves from downloading the perfect DVD divx version from usenet newsgroups months before the movies hit the European cinemas. We absolutely love buying inferior DVD releases often with extras stripped away, we are glad Sony has shut down that horrible import shop Lik-Sang as our inferior PAL TV sets might get irreversibly damaged when Japanese Dreamcasts are connected to them running Shenmue.
How come Microsoft is able to release the games and consoles pretty much worldwide and have the Live Arcade available for ALL to play simultaneously? There's something not quite right about this. Perhaps there is a sinister evil plot behind it.....it's too good to be true!
Perhaps PC gaming isn't that bad after all ;)
Perhaps this cynical post is caused by the fact that some wonderfull person stole my bike today, right out of my front garden. Just great....
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Mark Vergeer - Editor / Pixelator / Citizen of Europe
Armchair Arcade, Inc.
Xboxlive gametag
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Mark, I have some GOOD news for you. I was shopping all around trying to find a boxed set that contained both Baldur's Gate games and the expansions on DVD-ROMs. Guess what: such a collection is available, and it's published by Atari. And it's only available in Europe. If I want to buy these damn games on this side of the pond, I'll have to buy them separately on a ridiculous # of CD-ROMs that probably won't even work on Vista anyway.
Score one for the Europeans! ;-)
hey matt, want to know something even better;
check this from amazon uk by atari
one dvd collection with
# Neverwinter Nights
# Neverwinter Nights Expansion Pack: The Shadows of the Undrentide
# Neverwinter Nights Expansion Pack:Â The Hordes of the Underdark
# Baldur's Gate 1
# Baldur's Gate Expansion Pack: Tales of the Sword Coast
# Baldur's Gate 2
# Baldur's Gate 2 Expansion Pack: Throne of Baal
# Icewind Dale 1
# Icewind Dale Expansion Pack: Heart of Winter
# Icewind Dale 2
-- Stu --
Dangit. Now I'm really getting jealous. Why the $#$@ haven't these things been released in the US? We Americans *never* get the cool stuff. We have to wait forever...
Lol, I better stop before Mark launches an empty bottle of Chimay at me.
I'm jealous too! How bizarre we don't get the loaded DVD's. I remember the good old days when Europe was all on cassettes and we were on disks. Now it seems like we're getting the old switcheroo in return with DVD's and CD's...
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Bill Loguidice, Managing Director
Armchair Arcade, Inc.
(A PC Magazine Top 100 Website)
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Ha, here's some more news: Wii is still #1. This reminds me; a few days ago I noticed a student was listening to mp3s on a PSP, and I asked him what he thought of the unit. His response was that he wished he'd bought a Wii instead. I thought that was an interesting response given the portable nature of the PSP, but I guess the Wii is really catching on among college students. No doubt the many "party games" available for it help with that, plus the vaguely suggestive name of the unit.
Well, the one thing we have to keep in mind is that the bloom is still on the Wii rose. While it's still over 5 million units behind the Xbox 360, it's also not handicapped in Japan like the 360 - with its Western technology and paradigm - is. The PS3, even though units are more or less available in many areas, has still not had a full worldwide launch (or at least in all the territories that matter). Early momentum is easy, sustaining it over the long haul with the right titles that people will actually buy is another story. It will be interesting to see if Nintendo can keep the right titles coming for the Wii. The 360 is guaranteed to have system selling blockbusters pick up the slack starting in the fall (most notably GTA 4 and Halo 3) and the PS3 is also still a few big titles away from getting on people's radar (will GTA 4 do it?). It will be interesting to see if the 360 can maintain any of its worldwide lead in the mid-term without having sales in the critical territory of Japan (which it will never have) and how much steam the PS3 can pick up (and it will, despite the fervent hope of Sony haters), particularly since it hasn't even launched in Europe yet. There are a lot of factors at play here. It remains to be seen if indeed "non-gamers" are buying the Wii and if they are, will they actually buy games for it? Also, will the hardcore gamers who are enjoying the Wii continue to be entertained by the game selection in six months? (certainly the virtual console helps tremendously). Online gameplay is still a no-go on the Wii and looks like it will be very limited over the next year. Again, will that have an impact? It's something of a cop out, but we won't know where the three top systems stand and can make accurate long term predictions until January 2008, when enough big-name franchise titles will be out on each of the systems to make a difference! However, I predict that by that time, we WILL be able to predict with a high degree of accuracy where all three systems will stand in worldwide sales and support over the remaining term of this generation. I'm thinking some people will be in for some big surprises...
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Bill Loguidice, Managing Director
Armchair Arcade, Inc.
(A PC Magazine Top 100 Website)
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It is wierd reading this forum on my DS and replyingn it aswell. Slow but remarkably doable......double responses and all, a little flakey though
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Mark Vergeer - Editor / Pixelator
Armchair Arcade, Inc.
Xboxlive gametag
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LOL, so in the end we all get screwed somehow. Don't worry about me going berzerk, the fact that I live accross the big pond has its advantages. During the c64 era PAL releases were plenty and sometimes NTSC releases were vastly different and way more than just a different timing adjustment.
It is wierd reading this forum on my DS and replyingn it aswell. Slow but remarkably doable......
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Mark Vergeer - Editor / Pixelator
Armchair Arcade, Inc.
Xboxlive gametag
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