Queues form for Playstation 3 launch

Tomorrow sees the console unwrapped from the shackles of European games stores and into the hands of bleary-eyed consumers.

Whether customers are bleary eyed due to the extended wait Europe has had to endure compared to the US and Japan, or whether its due to all night queuing, is hard to tell.

Fortunately if you live in Italy, you've not had to wait in queues quite as long as your European cousins. It's been widely reported that retailers in Italy broke ranks and Italian gamers were picking up Playstation 3 units on Wednesday, after sellers across the country simply chose to start selling the console two days early.

Last week the UK saw exceptional weather for maintaining happy campers in lengthy queues outside of your local Woolworths, but this week the country saw ice, blizzards and rain, just in time for the PS3's debut. Which leads some to question the launch of a console at Spring time.

Some retailers have been quick to offer additional services to ensure customers are kept warm - and more importantly safe, after a spate of British police requests to forego a midnight launch of the Playstation 3 in the UK. For instance, the Virgin Megastore on Oxford Street is opening from 12 noon today. The store opening, 12 hours prior to the official launch, is offering a makeshift campsite for customers on its lower floor in order to provide a more comfortable and safer area for keen gamers.

Virgin will be one of very few stores to offer midnight launches. Oxford Street Game is foregoing a midnight launch after the police advice and will open at 7am Friday morning instead - but only to those 150 customers that pre-ordered.

The lower level floor provided by Virgin will be of some comfort to those who had begun queuing on Wednesday - with five people in the queue by the time the doors shut at 10pm.

Although most launches are beset with availability problems, the PS3 is unlucky to suffer from the usual derth of units. Virgin marketing exec Stephen Lynn told GamesIndustry.biz that as well as a healthy number of pre-ordered consoles, he expects free stock to sell out by lunchtime on Friday, making the queuing by hardcore fans even more unusual.

Apparently retailers are promising to fulfill all pre-orders, and have consoles available on shelves for sometime to come - possibly meaning Sony won't gain the usually applied 'sold-out' status to its new machine.

Whether this is due to overly plentiful stock or simply due to lack of demand for the £425 console, is strongly contested by Sony, retailers, and the media.

Whilst Sony has banged on about its brilliance at being able to meet market demand, forgetting that its actually 5 months late, multiple retailers have suggested amazing levels of interest, pre-orders, and expected sales.

Some of those cynical media-types have been less than congratulatory, forming opinions that Sony is suffering from its risque pricing and Blue-ray bundling, and that units on shelves means disaster.

We can only wait and see.

The Friday launch date will also see the launch of a new firmware update for the Playstation 3 which boosts the number of PS2 games compatible with the console - full details are available here from Sony. If you wish to know what games and peripherals will be ready on shelves to purchase tomorrow, check out this link. µ

See also
Xbox handheld and solid PSP2 rumours do the rounds
Xbox handheld and solid PSP2 rumours do the rounds
Wii mod-chip works
PS3 and wii shortages reviewed