Sir Howard Stringer, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Sony Corporation, was quoted as saying the launch was going to be in April. Sony confirmed through their Threespeech blog that this was a mistake and that the PlayStation 3 launch is still being lined up for the March 23 launch date!
While the American PS3 price was set at $499 (€385) for 20GB and $599 (€462) for 60GB, by comparison (see below list) the European prices are MUCH HIGHER. Here’s an overview of Sony’s various launch prices straight from retail execs for the PS3 in Europe (and we added Australia too) which will be as follows:
* Ireland – €629 for 60GB (that’s $815)
* Europe – €499 for 20GB / €599 for 60GB (that’s $775)
* UK – £425 for 60GB (that’s €647 or $838)
* Australia – AU$830 for 20GB / AU$999 for 60GB (that’s €608 or $787)
* New Zealand – NZ$1199 for 60GB (that’s €647 or $840)
Why the different prices? Ireland is an extra €20 ($25) compared to Europe due to their tax rates being higher, at 21%. There’s no real reason why the UK price is £30 (€45/$60) more than that of Europe, other than the cost of living is greater in the UK and retailers won’t budge from their inflated mark-up!
If you have any doubts if you should buy a PS3. Sony takes away all your doubts by comparing the PS3’s power with stacking cups… yes it’s an analogy in which cups are stacked fast! At least it’s better than a crying baby from hell.
Just wanted to add that the point of the US to EU currency comparison is that the rest of Europe were paying €599 from the neatly equal transferred US price of $599. Ireland and the UK can now look forward to paying another 10% more than that. Sony as a Japanese company report their income in Yen, so the weak Dollar isn’t exactly doing them much good, but they are willing to take that loss, then turn around and charge Europe even more despite a strong Euro and Pound which should make it lower priced.
The irony here is that the spread of PS2 consoles between all territories shows Japan received 23.99 million, Europe 42.40 million and America 44.86 million PS2’s. Clearly showing Europe is almost equally as large a territory for Sony as America, so where’s Europe’s HDMI cable and pack-in movie at launch? Not in the box. I hope this can be seen as constructive criticism, because once the PS3 price goes down and more importantly it gets a handful of must-have games, people (including us) will be al over it, but right now… not so much.