The European PS3 launch – a fiasco
Sony’s European launch of the PlayStation 3 has been nothing but a failure. Sony have been spreading the rumour that all available Playstation 3’s have been pre-booked and that it will be impossible to get hold of one. Today we shopped around to see if the rumour was true. It wasn’t – thousands and thousands of PlayStation 3 units are still available:
Here’s some examples:
Some stores in Sweden:
Komplett.se: 78 in stock
Console.se: in stock
Elgiganten.se: in stock
Spelbutiken.se: in stock
Webhallen.com: hundreds in stock
Dischop.se: 168 in stock
Some stores in United Kingdom:
Amazon.co.uk: in stock
Argos.co.uk: in stock
Gameseek: in stock
Some stores in Denmark:
Coolshop.dk in stock
Summary: It was extremely easy to find stores that had lots of PS3’s in stock – and the sold-out rumours that Sony has been spreading are far from true. Another funny fact is that it’s still almost impossible to get hold of a Nintendo Wii – and they have been out for months in Europe.
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March 25th, 2007 22:52
Here in Germany I just saw a bunch in a local media store yesterday. Same situation in lots of other stores.
March 25th, 2007 23:06
My local supermarket were allowed 25 – after the pre-orders were taken, they had 12 left.
I read in a mag last weekend that last month in the US
200,000 PS3’s had been sold
246,000 Xbox 360’s
BUT
450,000 Wii’s had been sold nearly out stripping supply
I just hope that this continues and the PS3 ends up being a flop.
March 26th, 2007 09:01
Here in Spain, you can find dozens of them in every store. Nobody even looked at them. But there was a crowd to watch a kid playing with a Wii.
March 26th, 2007 09:25
Not surprisingly, the situation is similar here in Finland: stores are full of PS3’s with no one interested in buying one.
In the midnight launch event, a total of 7 people showed up…
Note that this launch event is different from the industry internal PR party where they had to present live sex shows to rouse any interest – for details see for example Destructoid: http://www.destructoid.com/more-haterade-finland-ps3-porn-launch–30578.phtml
March 26th, 2007 09:28
Here’s a better working link about the Finnish PS3 HC porn party:
http://www.destructoid.com/more-haterade-finland-ps3-porn-launch–30578.phtml
Also featured on MaxConsole:
http://www.maxconsole.net/?mode=news&newsid=15395
March 26th, 2007 13:35
Curiously, here in Portugal the situation is the opposite.
The shelves are full of Wiis just sitting there and there are no PS3s to be seen (whether any of them ever got to any store I do not know).
The blame goes to the Portuguese importer of the Nintendo brand
So, if anyone wants a PAL Wii, come to Portugal
March 26th, 2007 15:41
According to your list above, only 2 stores with a total of 246 units were in stock in 3 countries… either thats a dam good sell out or your page is as good a Sonys launch??
Komplett.se: 78 in stock
Dischop.se: 168 in stock
March 26th, 2007 18:47
it only part of the truth! i was in a store in germany 1 day after launch of the Wii – they had loads of them in stock and continue to do so since. it’s a matter of where you go and whom you ask.
March 26th, 2007 19:36
“Kevin
March 26th, 2007 15:41
According to your list above, only 2 stores with a total of 246 units were in stock in 3 countries… either thats a dam good sell out or your page is as good a Sonys launch??
Komplett.se: 78 in stock
Dischop.se: 168 in stock”
Try reading the rest where it also says, “Webhallen.com: hundreds in stock” and others were ‘in stock’, some sites don’t give out the number of stock available, so out of the 6 Swedish sites mentioned, there could be 2 or 3000 unsold.
I checked at least 6 UK websites that all had stock, in fact, no high street store or site has sold out of their allocation and you could walk into any shop that is selling the PS3 and buy one. The launch was a failure, it was the worst launch out of the 3 ‘next-gen’ launches.
March 26th, 2007 20:27
Kevin, I just reacted to the fact that Sony has been saying that ‘it will be impossible to get hold of a PS3 in Europe this weekend since they are all sold out’ – a fact that wasn’t true.
March 26th, 2007 22:01
[...] It’s been so boring today, no news worth putting up on Mental Gamers and I’m not going to join the rest of the internet going on about the PS3, I already said it was a failed launch, nothing I can say is going to make any difference to what everyone else is saying. UK:Resistance have pretty much everything about the failings of the PS3 in Europe featuring a photo from most of the ‘events’, including the pretty much non-existent one in Birmingham. It seems I’m not the only one that thinks it was a failure, fosfor gadgets also think the same and the fact is, it was a disappointing launch despite the announcement that it’s actually the fastest selling console by selling 165,000 over the weekend. [...]
September 6th, 2008 16:11
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