StarDestroyer.Net BBS

It isn't better in France.
I've been watching the launch event here in Paris. It was absolutely pathetic from the beginning to the end.
Sony had a boat turned into a floating store, docked in front of the Eiffel Tower with a thousand PS3s in it.
At midnight, a few dozen people came on board to get their consoles, and 30 minutes later, it was over. No one was left except journalists and security people (i'd say they were more of them than customers tonight), wandering along the deserted, oversized waiting lines.
A pathetic sight indeed.

Naaah, who am i kidding, it was hilarious.

March 22 2007
Australian PS3 Launch Shindig

What if Sony threw a launch party and nobody came?

10:30pm - I'm at Pitt St. Mall, heart of Sydney's city shopping, and location for the "official" Sony launch. Not exactly official official, since it was put on by Myer in an attempt to remind people they sell video games, rather than Sony in an attempt to remind people the PS3 was coming out. But all the Sony bigwigs were there, so that's official enough for me. And you too, I imagine.

For our entertainment: a massive screen projecting Casino Royale. I've seen this already. Attempts to suggest we watch The Thing fall on deaf ears. Cut me loose, goddamnit, cut me loose. Not on Blu-Ray, you see. Also on offer is free coffee, ice cream and Pepsi. No Coke? "Not our sponsors, mate" comes the reply. Fair enough, I know how these things work. It's all a little impressive for a quiet Thursday night.

10:50pm - Some hot young thing from a radio station is here trying her little heart out to MC the evening by interrupting the Casino Royal screening to get everyone excited for the PS3. "Did you know the PS3 can use two remotes?" she shrieks with feigned delight. The blank stares she receives in return lets her know she said something unacceptable. She doesn't care: she's young, and beautiful, and these men are up at midnight on a school night to spend $1000 on a video games console.

11:00pm - It all starts going a little bit wrong. You see, for security purposes, crash barriers have been erected in front of the Casino Royale screen, in order to best herd the hordes of expected customers up the escalators towards their waiting PS3s. Except...nobody is here. It's an hour before kick-off, and there's probably 40 people in line. Another twenty and they might outnumber the media in attendance.

A quick run down to the EB and JB Hi-Fi at the nearby Galeries shopping centre tell a similar story: ghost towns.

Back at Myer, some radio people are grabbing teenagers (appropriately, mind) and getting them to scream "PS3!! YEAH!!!" into a mic, no doubt so all of Sydney could share in the excitement. Three kids obliged, and for the second time in the night a radio personality is met with 100 blank, disapproving stares.

11:25pm - Still nobody here. A band of douches with a filmcrew were trying to interview people about the PS3. "Fuck, mate, there's nobody here!" one exhales between cigarettes. "Hey, ladies!" another, the cameraman, hollers.

Two thirty-something women who had stopped for a moment to perv on Daniel Craig were pounced upon. "Hey, ladies, are you here to buy a PS3?" the interviewer pleads.

"Uh...no".

"Fuck! Nobody is! Well, can you pretend you are? You'll be on TV!"

Fantastic.

11:40 - A few more people have trickled in. Still, counting actual customers (and not their mates/girlfriends/crazy homeless people loitering to score free coffee and a movie) we're looking at 50, 60 tops. Only a brave man would say this is meeting expectations. Who knows why the turnout is so low? We'd have asked the non-attendees themselves if they'd attended.

The radio girl with the nice legs is still doin her thang on the m-i-c. I feel a little sorry for her. In her spare time she obviously finds the very concept of games abhorrent, yet here she is, propped up on stage at midnight on a Thursday having to pretend she knows everything about the PS3. There are worse jobs, sure, but there are also better ones.

11:50 - It's nearly go-time. Crowd is still pretty small, and is obviously going to stay that way. I feel kind of bad for the Sony guys. They all seem like really nice people, and have put on a good enough show tonight, it's just...for whatever reason, bugger-all people have felt compelled to make the midnight trip.

11:59 - We are go. The first customer in line, the lovable "Danny" ("I really thought there'd be more people here"), who will be purchasing Virtua Fighter 5, a HDMI cable and a second controller, is ushered inside for his four minutes of fame. He hits the counter, hands over his pre-order ticket, SCE Australia boss Michael Ephraim is on the other side of the counter, smiling like a father at the birth of his third child. Goods are exchanged for currency

The same tool who had tried to rig up the fake interview bellows "let's hear it for the PlayStation 3!". He had no connection to Sony whatsoever, so I'm not sure of his motives, but up went the cheers anyway. From the Myer and Sony staff, they were genuine. From the attending media, they were sarcastic, and from the waiting crowd, embarrassed smiles.

12:07 - Nothing more to see here. The crowd is probably at around 80 or so which, for the official PS3 launch in Australia's biggest city, was a piss-poor turnout. Already the barriers and screen outside are being dismantled, and as Danny rushes home to play some VF5 I'm off to bed.

Final thoughts? Last night was a bust (and not just at the official launch). Sony put on a good show, but I don't think they, or Myer, had readied themselves for the fact nobody wanted to come. Midnight launches just aren't as popular in Australia as they are in other places (it's the apathy, you see), and when you throw in the fact the PS3 has come in on the back of 5 months of bad press (including the local media) and costs AUD$1000 (which is a significant psychological barrier) the turnout was about what I was expecting.

Still, this is only the first night of thousands that this thing will be on sale. I'd expect a few to be sold today and over the weekend as people do their shopping in regular, human hours, so it'd be unfair to pass judgement on the "launch" as whole until the GfK figures come in sometime next week.

Going just on last night, though? I'm hesitant to use the word disaster, but it's not the best start for the PS3 down under.

Luke Plunkett

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:
But oh God.

Oh my God.

The "official" Australian launch was awful. Report care of

Dartzap wrote:The Virgin Megastore in London was giving away a free HD TV with every PS3 sold. It was apparently the only way to get people to cough up

Handing out chairs to the weary fans waiting in the PS3 lines that were printed with a link to this site on the back of them.
Sending SMS messages to game journalists saying "The Xbox 360 team wishes you a good night."
Driving boats past the Sony event adorned with "XBOX 360 HEARTS YOU" signs.
Arming themselves with whistles and blowing them from rooftops to drown out the noise of Sony PR.

ABC News wrote:PS3 launch gets off to slow start

The first gamers outside the United States to get their hands on Sony's PlayStation 3 (PS3) were thin on the ground as the much hyped launch of the new games console got under way.

Stores in Australia and New Zealand were the first to open their doors to eager gamers before European shops broke open the seals at midnight (local time).

Organisers had predicted that thousands of gaming fans would turn out to snatch up the first of the next generation units that were given a glitzy launch at Sydney's Myer department store.

In the end, just 65 excited gamers queued outside Myer for around four hours, before being allowed inside where they barely outnumbered staff and publicists.

Nevertheless, advertising sales executive Danny Zarka, 31, said the midnight wait had been worth it.

"I was really thrilled to be the first one to get my hands on this baby before anyone else," he said as he clutched his new PS3 console.

"It's going to be a sleepless night, but I haven't scheduled any meetings for early tomorrow."

The launch of the PS3 in Japan and the United States back in November resulted in a consumer frenzy that resulted in punch-ups and at least one shooting.

Sony and major retailers had talked up the long-delayed launch in Australasia and Europe, but there had been speculation that the PS3's hefty price tag might deter consumers.

The PS3 does not come cheap, costing $1,000 for Australian customers.

The PS3 has been out sold by rival Nintendo's Wii machine and Microsoft's XBox 360 in the United States.

Outside the Virgin Megastore's flagship outlet in London, diehard gamers had camped for 36 hours to be first in line for the release.

Steve Lynn, the Megastore's senior public relations manager, said the consoles were "in a secure location within the building locked up waiting for midnight".

Game, Britain's largest video games retailer, said it had ruled out a special midnight event following discussions with police over crowd safety.

"The launch of the PS3 is a big deal to our customers," said the chain's marketing director Anna Macario.

"We are managing the launch so it is safe for them and the only thing they have to concentrate on is securing their new console."

In France, a special boat was due to ferry 1,000 PS3s along the Seine to the foot of the Eiffel Tower, where enthusiasts will brave the chilly Parisian night to get their hands on a console.

In Berlin, Robert Stoeller, head of the computer games department at the Saturn electrical store, was expecting gamers to queue early.

"We are expecting a lot of people to start queuing from 9pm (local time) ahead of it going on sale at midnight," he said.

"We'll stay open until 2am, but like in other countries I am expecting it to sell out in 60 minutes."

At the nearby Sony Centre, the company's European headquarters, a rock concert was to be held to entertain fans waiting to buy a console.

However for Ritatsu Thomas, 17, who headed the queue outside the Virgin Megastore in London, the wait and cost were worth it.

"It will mean a lot to be the first person in Britain to get one," he said.

The graphic design student from south-west London took a sleeping bag, a flask, vitamin pills and a teach yourself Japanese book to pass the time.

- AFP

News.com.au wrote: PS3 fans soak up $20m sale

March 23, 2007 04:30am


GAMERS queued in droves outside retail shops across Australia to buy Sony's PlayStation 3 from the stroke of midnight (AEDT).

The much-anticipated release involved more than 500 retailers opening their doors in the early hours.

Many retailers provided free food and entertainment as gaming enthusiasts arrived hours before sales commenced.

Myer at Sydney's Pitt St mall erected a large backdrop and screened the latest James Bond movie, Casino Royale, from 10pm.

Customers were also treated to free popcorn and ice-cream.

More than $20 million worth of stock had been ordered by retailers in anticipation of large initial sales similar to when the PS3 went on sale in the US and Japan five months ago.

Production problems delayed its release in the rest of the world.

Just after midnight, Danny Zarka, 31, bought the first PS3 from the Sydney Myer store.

“I feel very privileged to be the first to buy a PlayStation 3,” Mr Zarka said.

Michael Ephraim, managing director of Sony Computer Entertainment Australia, said the PS3 will still have a place in the living room in 10 years' time.

“There has been so much talk about our next generation console that it is exciting for us that the public now get to experience it for themselves and make up their own minds,” Mr Ephraim said.

The PS3 arrives on Australian shores one year after Microsoft released its Xbox 360 console locally and five months after Nintendo launched its Wii unit.

At $999, the PS3 is the dearest of the three but boasts the most features, including a high-definition Blu-ray DVD player.

The top Xbox 360 model retails for $649 and the Wii - which does not currently feature a DVD player - is a modest $399.

Microsoft next week offers an HD DVD player - the rival high-definition format to Blu-ray - as a $250 add-on to its console.

The PS3 also aims to be a far more connected device than its predecessors with advanced online competition modes, but it didn't attract all good press at its Australian launch.

Australian gamers who had already suffered a five-month delay in its delivery were forced to settle for a scaled-back version of the console.

PS3 systems available in Europe and Australia will not have the same capabilities of the US and Japanese models, despite costing around $300 more.

The 60GB PS3 was launched in the US last November with a price tag of $US599 ($770) and costs ¥60,000 ($640) in Japan - $360 less than the model on sale in Australia.

And if the price tag wasn’t enough to make gamers throw their controllers out of their prams, cost-cutting measures mean the Australian versions have limited “backwards compatibility” – meaning it will not be able to play all PS1 and PS2 games.

"About 50 to 60 per cent of (earlier) games are playable in some form, but some of the big-name games like Gran Turismo 4 and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas don't play properly," said Peter Bayliss, a PhD student in Video Game Theory at RMIT.

"While it's generally good news, some of the games people actually want to hold on to might not work."

Australian PS3 owners will also need to install upgrades available through PlayStation online to play PS1 and PS2 games.

Dartzap wrote:The Virgin Megastore in London was giving away a free HD TV with every PS3 sold. It was apparently the only way to get people to cough up

Master of Ossus wrote:The systems being on shelves is a good thing for Sony! It shows that their distribution system is much more developed and powerful than that of Nintendo or MS, and that Sony knows how to take care of its customers. [/Sony fanwhore]

Some of the pics online are priceless.

I will be interested to see their sales figures, though. If Sony does very poorly in March and April, with the European release and with their "killer app" Lair coming out, then I think they would be in absolutely desperate straits.

General Zod wrote:No no no, clearly having all those PS3s on the shelves means that they're able to more than surpass demand of the system and have plenty of stock so they don't face the shortage problems like Nintendo is having! If they have enough available to keep everyone happy, they're clearly doing a far better job than the companies running out every 30 seconds! [/Sony spin doctors]

General Schatten wrote:I feel horrible about it, but I'm laughing my ass off, is this experience what my German brethren call Schadenfreude?