EU 'Happy' To Wait For PS3 69
Eurogamer reports on comments by SCE Worldwide Europe VP Jamie MacDonald almost designed to irk anyone left frustrated by Sony's delay of the PS3 in Europe. According to Mr. MacDonald, Europe has always waited before, so why should this time be any different? From the article: "In Europe, it doesn't seem that the release of our platforms after the US and Japan - in the long run - affects how consumers feel ... If we were sitting here in five years' time, I don't think we'd really think about or notice that PlayStation 3 was four or five months later in Europe. I think in the long run, PlayStation 3 will succeed because of the great product it is and the great software we make for it."
Waiting (Score:3, Funny)
Hell, I wouldn't mind waiting either. Wii aren't interested in the slightest....
In the Sony Corporation, (Score:2, Insightful)
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In Sonyspeak, is it customers or users? (Score:5, Funny)
I think you mean "DRM-enabled clients".
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Another empty/meaningless PR comment (Score:3, Interesting)
Instead, I'd try to explain why it's gonna take 5 months to release the PS3 in europe.
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Everyone knows Europeans are too smart to waste money on video games like the U.S. and Japan anyway.
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So if you want some arcade-style four-players-in-a-room party action, what do you do? Buy four PCs and four copies of each game?
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Play as the team from Worms [wikipedia.org] in which multiplayer sport sim? If, as I suspect, you meant play one of the Worms turn-based shooters [wikipedia.org], then what do you do when you want to play a real-time multiplayer game on a PC? Why aren't there more PC games that allow four players to each use one USB joypad?
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Why are there quotation marks around 'Happy'? (Score:3, Informative)
I do not see the word anywhere in the article. If it is not in fact a quote, it should not be presented as one, should it?
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In case you don't feel like clicking the link:
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Put simply, you misread the article I linked to [susx.ac.uk].
The working definition provided in that article is, again:
While it's true that the article does provide several examples which emphasize "this is their te
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In this case, I assume he used single-quotes to point out that he believes the word 'Happy' was an implication by the speaker, even if it's not specifically what he said.
how to annoy people 101 (Score:3, Funny)
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Also remember that most people in Europe don't see things like this, they just hear about it when it's out. And after all, if you were actua
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Agreed... (Score:2, Funny)
Depends on the meaning of Happy (Score:1)
Besides, think of all the fun they'll be getting from their new Wii's while they "wait".
The only problem will be if they forget to buy the PS3's when they actually arrive in the EU.
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Here in Europe we tend to get paid a heck of a lot more than in the US and Japan which is why the exchange rate schews the figures so much. I remember moving to London from florida and thinking everything was soo expensive while I still converted everything back into U.S. dollars (1 British Pound = almost 2 U.S. dollars). Then I got my first paycheck and when I converted that back into U.S. dollars I felt like a very rich man!
Although with winter
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It is all about the exchange rate. 1 British pound = 2 U.S. Dollars, 1 Euro = 1.5 U.S. Dollars. My measily £20,000 salary in London (which is pretty damn low for a graduate in London) = $40,000 in U.S. dollars, I don't know a single recently graduated mate back in Florida on anything near that (and most of them have far better jobs than I).
To over-simplify things somewhat, the exchange rate disparity is largely due to the high minimum wages of European countries. But this als
You Tell'm Jamie (Score:1)
They Should Consider Themselves Lucky (Score:2, Insightful)
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And your point is... what?
Of course, a delay in Europe advantages the alert consumer, for whom all the information on all three consoles will be available when the European PS3 ships. This is a double-edged sword for Sony, of course, because it means that if the PS3 doesn't live up to its expectations in Japan and North America, then the chance of success in Europe falls dramatically.
In other words: the delay sucks for Sony and for the diehard european Sony fans, but not for the average savvy consumer.
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What they need to be worrying about is the market saturation potential over in Europe. I'm sure plenty of gamers that held off from the 360 and were planning to hold off on the Wii did so because they figured, "Hey, it'll be in November, no problem - I can wait."
Now they hear, "Oops... it's gonna be another half year, sorry" - except that the Sorry wasn't even included! It was more like, "You've waited before, we know you'll wait again, deal with it."
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Maybe if they wait, the EU price will drop (Score:1)
If they wait, maybe they'll get the Japanese price of US $406.
The reason why... (Score:2)
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Japan speaks 1 language. N America speaks 2. (Score:2)
The problem is that nearly every country in Europe speaks a different language and thus requires redoing the screen text, the voice acting, and the signs on all the walls. You can't just bring over your English/French game from North America and expect to sell it out
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However Xbox (or Gamecube) never really hit it big on continental Europe and that might be why Sony feels less pressure to launch along with other markets. (PS2 has sold about the same numbers as in NA)
Competition (Score:4, Interesting)
Playstation: September 1995.
Competition: Sega Saturn (July 1995). The Nintendo 64 was not released for another 2 years.
Playstation 2: November 2000.
Competition: Sega Dreamcast (October 1999). The Nintendo GameCube was not released for another 12 months, the XBOX another 4 months after that.
Playstation 3: March 2007.
Competition: Nintendo Wii (November 2006), XBOX 360 (November 2005).
Sony is walking into a whole world of hurt in Europe. By March 2006 there may not be much of a market left for them. They've faced nothing like this sort of competition in the past.
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The PS3 is going to be facing the XBox360 and Wii at launch. The XBox360 is already established in the U.S.A. and Europe and is currently a failure in Japan. The Wii is aiming at a different market, and if you're right about European discretionary spending, is likely to be the big winner there. The main 'battlefield' between the XBox360 and PS3 is going to be the US (and japan is the PS3 truly sucks).
Given all that, it make sense to
I'm in North America, and I will wait too.... (Score:1)
Until the price drops significantly and until Sony actually makes due with the promises for a breadth of functionality, I won't have any interest in getting it.
I bought the PSP thinking that Sony would support it with lots of features, such as GPS, etc, bu
Bad PR move. (Score:1)
I'd buy a PS3 if... (Score:4, Interesting)
Back in the 90's before the PSO came out DVDs were not very popular in japan. but they had a strong foothold in the states, with a lot of content already out in the format. They included a DVD player with the PSO. and soon after people in Japan started trying DVDs and DVD sale then went up in Japan. But since the format already took off in the US and there were plenty of content (although different region) The existing manufacturers could cheaply put stuff out for the different region.
So when the Games division wanted do put a hard drive in the PSP, the higher ups wanted to promote the UMD format so they forced them to use that instead. And the UMD has failed, and there isn't much good content for the PSP.
Now when they come out with PS3, the other divisions had Blu-Ray, and so corporate force the games folx to include that hardware.
Sony forgot although they made DVD format popular in Japan with the PSO, there were large libraries of content already out for it in the rest of the world.
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I guess you're thinking about the PS2. The PSone only had a CD player.
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That's right, Sony! (Score:1, Flamebait)
I'm European, and I just love to wait. In fact, I'll wait at least two or three more years until I'll get a PS3. If I ever get one. Because I'll wait until the price of your rich man's toy comes down to a more agreable level.
I'll get a Wii the day it comes out, though.
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I'm a Happy European! (Score:2)
Seriously Sony, stop rubbing salt in the wounds. You are years late, with a machine that has been cut from having 4 9-core Cell chips to 1 7-core chip, and here in England we are still smarting from last Christmas when there were too few PSPs to go round and we were forced to buy up to 4 bundled junk games if we wanted one.
If you don't put a foot wrong for the next few years, I'll eventually pick up a cheap secondhand PS3... but only if Gran Turismo 5 is
Bizarre (Score:2)
Having said that, I really don't know why anyone would want to own *any* console in its first few months of life. There no console in the world that justifies an instant purchase. Not one. Most even offer a level of backwards compatibility so
oi !! Aussies / Kiwi's love to wait too (Score:1)