Harrison Dishes Out Some Hotness In London
The European launch of the PS3 went off pretty smoothly. There were enough consoles to go around for pre-orders and walkups. Thankfully it was much more civilized than the stateside launch. Phil Harrison was on site at the Virgin Megastore in London for the midnight launch spectacular.
A little over 100 gamers were allowed to wait in the Virgin Megastore, to be the first in the UK to grab a machine. When midnight struck, an announcer told the crowd that they would be receiving a 46” HDTV, courtesy of Sony. They mailed the free televisions to everyone gathered, to save them the issue of carrying an enormous TV in a cab or on a train. Good call there guys. I’m glad they didn’t just give them the TV and said ‘Deal with it.’
Harrison Hands Out London Freebies[Next Generation]
Toots
Posted to Video Games on 23 March 2007
· Comments (2)
Other stuff like this: european, launch, ps3, tv
Unfortunately, due to the small version not being sold here *and* the usual markup (in Germany, the big PS3 costs roughly $800, cpd. to a recent price drop of the 360 premium to a comparably meager $400 in select stores...) the units are remaining in stores like lead at the bottom of the sea.
Imagine you staged a midnight launch event and nobody came - yeah, that's right. Damn calm...
How cool is Microsoft though, handing out folding chairs at the london launch with this: http://www.shkyw.org/ printed on the rest to the waiting crowd and 168 cans of beer (the equivalent of the price difference between PS3 and 360) to Journalists.
Another PR Gig from Redmond included a Boat with "XBox 360 loves you" passing the launch event at french river Seine.
By the by, Sony may have had enough units to satisfy the handful of European customers (though they are now mixing sales figures of the PS2 into their official numbers bc it apparently shows their dominance in the market or something) - but rumor has it than many stores neglected to order games other than Resistance, Mowtastorm and Genji...
For "much more civilized" read: "ghost town". It's extraordinary the way a lot of the media refuse to acknowledge how badly the European launch has gone. The game stores were empty yesterday. Most of them haven't made any kind of dent into their stock allocation and the situation has made Sony reps try to explain a more expensive machine with less functionality by saying that the US was a "massive land with cheap people", the UK was "a little island where rent and rates are at an absolute premium, and the cost of people is a lot more". He also blamed the "lazy press" and the cynicism of the country. Thank god for cynical brits!
http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=74533
Hilariously he actually said that it was "the cost of living" unfortunately for him the Euro PS3 tag line: "This is living" is now forever changed!
I think the way Sony has been behaving has been continuously insulting to the industry and those who play video games and they deserve a crappy Euro launch.