Sony to launch PS3 in Australia, Europe, New Zealand

BEIJING, March 19 (Xinhuanet) -- Remember when game consoles just played games, were simple and inexpensive? Well, no more!

In another series of long-awaited rollouts, Sony will launch on Friday its PlayStation 3 in Australia, Europe and New Zealand, and its price has escalated. Japanese gamers forked over 412 U.S. dollars in PS3's initial launch, Americans anteed up 599 dollars, but European gamers will have to pay 779 dollars to 840 dollars, while Australians must pay up to 839 dollars for a game console that also connects to the Internet, plays high-definition DVDs and stores photographs from a digital camera and music from an iPod.

The PS3 is big gamble by Sony, under its British chief executive Sir Howard Stringer, to regain dominance in home entertainment. The often-delayed product is expected to hit the Japanese giant with losses of 2 billion dollars this fiscal year. It takes a significant loss on every PS3 it manufactures and will hope to recoup the money from sales of 36 games that will be available at the launch.

Experts in Britain believe the PS3 will make a solid but unspectacular start this week.

"A lot of eyes are on Howard Stringer and whether the PS3 can reclaim the home entertainment crown for Sony," said Paul Jackson, principal analyst at Forrester Research.. "One product will not bring the corporation to its knees but they are pinning a lot of hopes on it ... And I doubt whether Sony expected such a negative backlash from the online community.'

Bloggers have given the PS3 a lukewarm reception.

One, named "Guspaz," wrote: "Assuming Sony sells every console in Europe that they ship, they'd still have sold only two-thirds as many as the Wii (and a quarter as many as the [XBox] 360). I don't think that it's too late for Sony to turn the PS3 around, but since it would involve swallowing their pride, popping their ego balloon, and taking heavy financial losses, I don't think it's likely to happen."

But David Carnoy, an editor at www.cnet.com, said: "Though not without a few minor drawbacks, the PS3 is a versatile and impressive piece of home entertainment equipment."

Sales of the PS3 in America have not been outstanding. In February it sold 127,000 units, trailing behind Nintendo's less costly Wii console, which sold 335,000, and Microsoft's XBox 360, which sold 228,000. Even Sony's PlayStation 2 -- the most popular game console -- sold 295,000, continuing to outperform its more expensive successor.

Retailers in Britain are trying to downplay concerns thousands of people will be left disappointed by a shortage. Sony has had time to ship 1 million PS3s for Friday's European launch, with 220,000 available in the UK -- by far the biggest console debut yet. Virgin Megastores said it had received several thousand pre-orders.

"The number of customers asking our sales staff about it over the last few weeks has been phenomenal," said Stephen Lynn, a senior manager.

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