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European PSP Release Date Announced
Tom writes "Sony has announced the official release date and price for the Sony PSP in Europe. The console will be released on September 1st 2005 and will retail for £179 (249). No launch titles have been revealed at this time, but the big games from the US launch are expected along with some more European developed titles."
249 euros , that is insane .. currently the imported models from the USA are selling for less than 250 with a game and some other goodies.
Im sorry but that is really low , the european market should not stand for such treatment . First off considering the strength of the dollar right now.
Do you realise that the price would be 349 USD for Europe
I for one will not stand for such treatment consider the price in the USA is 100 less.
lets just hope the submitter has the facts wrong
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
...when you can rip your own DVDs, get a 512MB Memory Stick, then put the movie (or TV shows...) you want to watch onto it.
I know that's my plan; my import is here 4 months earlier, and ends up costing less than the local price!
I mean, it's so nice of you to finally grace us, unworthy Europeans, with your magnificent PSP only nine months after it's launch in Japan. We thank you for your benevolence. We know how hard it is to release things in Europe, we are hard to find on a map, and the road is often closed due to rockfalls, and we are thankful that you are doing your all the make sure we get your newest system as fast as possible.
Your Grovelingly
Fred Or Alive, Unwashed British Peasant.
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I'm pretty sure at one point Sony said Europe would get the PSP at the same time as the US - hah! Some chance of that happening.
Living in Europe sucks sometimes. Frankly, if I had the money, I'd just import a US or Japanese model instead. It would be cheaper anyway... I don't care about region coding, as long as the games are region free, I can just rip my own media to memory cards.
Nintendo also screwed us, we got the DS several months after everyone else as well, although not as long as the PSPs delay. Their insult was just the fact they had a near simultaneous launch in North America and Japan.
10 PRINT "LOOK AROUND YOU ";
20 GOTO 10
Because they left it so late I've gone and got the wife pregnant because there was nothing to distract me.
Thanks a lot Sony its all your fault!
Bend over Euro :)
led me to believe it was coming out *just* after the DS. They couldn't have been doing that on purpose could they? To try and screw over the DS launch?
/sarcasm
When it comes to video games Australia gets screwed over a lot... sometimes were not even made aware of release dates and things just randomly appear at stores...
I know we use PAL on our TVs but it doesnt mean we liked being classed as europeans!
But what the hell is gonna happen when Australia becomes a republic?!
Accept any challenge, No matter the odds.
Roses are red, Violets are blue, I'll fuck you with a rake.
Generally, these sort of things sell less than in the US and Japan. Which is odd, because I figure if the PSP sold any less than it did in the US, they'd be into negative sales. And I don't know how that works yet.
This spoof press release says it all really - nine months late, 40% more expensive than the rest of the world. Because Sony love us!
Even better, not only can you get them by the shovel full via eBay or the likes of Lik Sang, but you can get them here in London in the high street (PSP avalible on Tottenham Court Road, primary home in London to gadgets and imported electronics gadgetry). Several people in the office have considered getting one, but all assumed it would be released in the UK within a month or two. I was going to wait till ~June to get a localised one, but if they are not going to bother to ship til Steptember I'll just pop down and get an import one at the weekend and order a stack of import games off the net.
It's bad enough with hardware, but it's even worse when it happens with software. I remember chipping my Dreamcast to play the superb Sega GT Import version from Japan, 80% of which was in English anyway (and everything else that wasn't was immediately obvious). A year or so later, when a UK version did arrive, I was horrifed to see it contained a fraction of the content, with all the interesting stuff (that actually made it a good title) stripped out in favour of being turned into a tedious clone. Unsurprisingly, few people even heard of it in the UK. There was really no reason to fuck with the game *at all*, yet they did and they totally buggered it up.
Sometimes, large amounts of drugs appear to be the only logical explanation for the actions of some companies in the games industry (yes DS, I'm looking at you - not one decent display in a sleek smark case, but two crappy low res screens, WTF? That after the embarrasment origional GBA screen that was so poorly lit that some titles were not playable anywhere except in a cupboard. At night. Under a blanket. Good greif.).
Sony are presumably holding off (despite doing lots of subtle marketing to nobble sales of the DS) so they can make as much moolah as possible in one big push in September. I expect there is some merit in this, and I expect they have done homework. However, I am also fairly sure that by then a lot of potential customers will have gotten over it and even forgotten about it, having read about it all in April, and they will go blow their money on some other toy instead (the PSP being 'old news' by then, and they will be getting all sweaty over things like the X-Box 2). And for a device that's too expensive for kids to buy, and where the perfect audience is gadget fans with plenty of disposable income that will mean a lot of missed games sales - which, at typical 15-20% of the revenue going to the console vendor (i.e. Sony) is where the real money is to be made.
When it eventually does come out here and the people still interested do buy it, I expect a lot of those people will buy a very small number of titles (perhaps 2 or 3), and will have stashed it in a drawer long before Xmas. True, Semptember is not too far away from the Xmas holiday period - short enough away to allow for it end up in kids Xmas stockings - and so could make up some headway there, but then kids just don't by that many games (YMMV, but ~80-90% of the people I see buying games in Virgin/HMV/GAME are 20-30somethings who appear to be shopping for themselves).