[Lynk Former]

The PS3 has finally been released in Europe and Australia... With this, all three consoles have been released in all major regions around the world and the new generation has officially ended its introductory period.

So far the Xbox360 and Nintendo Wii have both enjoyed a great launch and lifespan... the PS3 on the other hand isn't doing as well as Sony has hoped it'll do. But even so it's still early days... though I still have to laugh at Sony over this...

Angry Gamer's roving reporters drank a heap of chocolate milk, grabbed a camera and checked out the alleged hotspots of PS3 midnight launch activity in Australia. Here's what we saw. The short version? The worst launch since the Challenger space craft. (Story Updated!)


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Ha, see what we did there. The security guard at JB Hi-Fi was nice to us. He didn't even mind that we brought a audio recorder in to interview people with the podcast about. No pictures though. Anyway, at the stroke of midnight there were a grand total of three people in the store, milling about aimlessly waiting to buy a PS3. None of them really looked too happy to be there. The store manager was trying to drum up some excitement by asking people if they wanted to play Formula One, but nobody took him up on it. We asked him how he felt about it and he said he's not surprised about the lack of turn out given the price of the machine. We offered him our commiserations and left quietly, stopping only to ask the girlfriend of a PS3 purchaser how she felt about it all. She asked us to go away.


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At EB Games in the middle of the city they set up this huge corridor for people to line up. EXCEPT NOBODY CAME TO FILL UP THE LINE. No less than four security guards were hired to keep the NONEXISTANT crowd in line. Two of them left shortly after midnight. They were nice enough guys, but they wouldn't let us take photos, so we snuck this one in.


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Oh, we got this photo too. Anyway, we had a chat to some of the staff in that EB and they said they shifted a handful of machines, but not as many as the Toombul store, which apparently sold a whopping 20. We had a ncie chat to someone who just bought one machine and he as excited about the technology of the machine. Not the games (because you can get them all on the 360), not the movies (because well?Casino Royale, eh?)?just the technology. Wow. Wish I had that kind of money to waste on things that only do things in the hypothetical.


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We went to another EB Games and saw this. a handful of random people who were just there to kill some time because most stores are shut at this time of night and they ran out of money to drink at the nearby pubs. I've been to funerals that were more exciting than this. It really is the worst hardware launch the country has ever seen. Not even a few months ago these places were packed - Japanese trains at lunch hour packed - with people clamoring to buy a Wii. And now look at this.

I really wish I was exaggerating for comedic effect. God knows we searched the city high and low for launches. It was just like this at every store we visited over the two hour launch period. The PS3 is as welcome in this territory as peace in the middle east. Everyone keeps telling us we should have it but we're not convinced.


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One of the biggest PS3 retailers, Harvey Norman, have been blitzing television and radio ads over the past week about their midnight PS3 launch. Well, it looks like it went over so badly that they closed up shop early. Oops!

We then hit one more EB to see how it all went. Once again, it was a ghost town, but the manager was very proud of the fact that 33 pre-ordered machines were picked up. He wasn't so proud that he still had 50 un-ordered ones in the back room.

So Sony apparently brought 20,000 machines into the country. So if Brisbane sold just over 50, let's say Sydney and Melbourne did 200 each to be generous. Throw in some extras for the other capital cities and we'll call it 500 machines on launch night. Oh all right, let's be really generous and call it a thousand.

1,000 out of 20,000.

ABSOLUTELY UNIMITIGATED DISASTER.

http://www.angry-gamer.net/ag/index.php?...0&Itemid=2


That's only one of the horror stories Sony faced, there are some even better ones coming from Europe.