"PS3 console shortage could linger until March!" analysts predicted (probably by listening to the vibrations of the cosmos). And then the anti-PS3 people laughed. But surely you guys understood that announcements like this was good news, right? Because if the shortages will only last until March, then that means:
- A heck of a lot of PS3 units will ship by March.
- This "heck of a lot of PS3 units" is nothing more than the European launch of the PS3.
- The European launch will increase the numbers of PS3 units sold and broaden the market for PS3 games.
- We'll see a rise in the number of games available for the PS3.
Or at least that's what you'll think if you're the type of QJ reader that thinks the glass is half full instead of half empty.
But you do remember that SCEE (that's Sony Computer Entertainment Europe) confirmed way back in November of 2006 that the PS3 will launch in Europe in March. Of course doomsayers didn't think so. And their bad vibes caught on.
But the good vibes are back (and for many of us the good vibes never left). Recently people started to believe in a March 23 Europe launch (3/23 or 23/3, depending on how your country writes dates), and all this was despite and in spite of concerns that a real date has not yet been announced. In fact, some say the launch will happen in March, and it's just the announcement that's delayed (like in the article from earlier today).
Now Edge Online, the website of the hardware and software magazine, says that they have been told by "a source seeking to remain nameless" that the PS3 will "definitely launch in the UK on March 23 at £425."
"Not April at £350. Not September at £400." Edge's source insists on "March 23 at £425."
If this is the case, and assuming the UK launch will be simultaneous with the PS3 launches for the other countries in Europe, then March 23 is going to be a good day. We're picking up good vibrations.
By the way - and correct us if we're wrong - but wasn't March 23, 2006, the day that Sony announced the end of the PSOne's 11-year manufacturing run? If so, then that would make March 23, 2007, a good day full of symbolism for launching the PS3 in the UK and the rest of Europe.
March 23, 2007, is also the birthday of the HRH Princess Eugenie of York (will the Queen buy her a PS3?) and the 299th anniversary of the landing of James Francis Edward Stuart at the Firth of Forth, but that's not relevant.
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