PS3 Euro launch flopped.

It seems sony is not doing well with the euro launch of the PS3.

In France they had planned a big launch event at the foot of the Eiffel tower. They had planned for 3000 people but only 100 turned up. There were actually much less playstation 3 buyers than journalists! Of the 1000 PS3 sony had planned for the event only about 50 were sold. Also Microsoft passed by in a boat to taunt the sony execs. If you speak french you can read all about sony's french rout there: http://tf1.lci.fr/infos/high-tech/ [...] bide-.html

In Uk sony seemed to fare a little better, but the main London store open for the launch (virgin megastore on Oxford street) only saw about 100 customers. To thank them Sony offered each buyer of a PS3 a free sony bravia LCD worth more than 3 times the price of a PS3 though. You can read all about it there: http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=74493

In Belgium (where I live) I went this evening to mediamarkt (the local best buy) and there was a pile of PS3 amongst a lot of promotional material. I spent 30 minutes in the shop and not one console sold during that time.

I think sony really let europeans down: the machine is more expensive here because you can only buy the 60 gb model (which costs around $750 here by the way), 4 months late, and doesn't include the PS2 chipsed the US console has (which means that only 70% of PS2 games works, and of these most have glitches, freezes, screen coruption etc...). Also the machine is overpriced because of blue ray. I used to be sony fan (I own a PS2), but when I see how sony treated us europeans I am glad the PS3 launch flopped over here.

Yep, it would be nice if they could keep the telly...

On another note, I went shopping this midday and the mediamarkt still had a big pile of PS3 and we are now 3 days after the launch. One toy shop is now offering buyers one free PS3 game of their choice when buying the €599 playstation 3.

They are already starting to offer free games to help shift the units 3 days after the launch!

haha or if they would keep giving out those tv's to everyone in uk