Playstation 3 will, as you perhaps know by now, arrive 4 months later in Europe than the rest of the world. The reason is simply that there aren’t enough consoles, only 500,000 will be available at the launch, which is really far from enough to cover the demand from both Japan and USA. GamesIndustry.biz has interviewed Jamie MacDonald, SCE Worldwide Europe VP before the launch of Playstation 3. In part two of the interview they discuss the fact that Sony has chosen to delay the console in Europe and according to MacDonald, Sony thinks that Europe doesn’t mind having to wait a third of a year to see the console.
“European consumers have shown that historically they don’t mind that, because they end up buying as many PlayStations, if not more, than the US and Japan. 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.”
Sony must’ve missed the comments that appeared after the press release about the delay till March, but at the same time the market isn’t decided during the first months. A requirement for winning though is that you actually produce consoles and right now it seems that Nintendo is counting on selling twice as many consoles as Sony hopes to ship during the first year. Where Microsoft will end up remains to be seen, but it at least looks like both Sony and foremost Nintendo will catch up to MS quite fast.
