Oh, you Frenchies! With your UFOs and your Jerry Lewis film festivals. What will you do next? How about completely reject the PlayStation 3?

 

That's the sad word from the land of the striped shirt and beret, where cowardly cheese-eaters just wouldn't man up and cause crowd chaos around the launch of the PlayStation 3 at the Eiffel tower and the Champs-Elysées.

 

When asked, most French electronic stores confirmed the day before launch that, even without a reservation, anybody could come and get a console.

 

French retailer Fnac held the official event for the night launch. At the Champs-Elysées Fnac store, where the launch event started Thursday at noon with PS3 playable demonstrations, you could buy the PS3 at full price--$800, thanks to the euro/dollar exchange rate--and skip right to cash register at midnight.

 

According to Next Generation:

 

At midnight no more than 50 people were actually queuing for a PS3. More than 100 media people were trying to get an image or a worthwhile interview. They were the crowd. The first official buyer’s Visa Card didn’t work. His moment in the media moved swiftly to another. The second buyer was overwhelmed by cameras. He didn’t have much to say either. All in all, maybe 50 PS3s sold. 950 were not.

To add insult to injury, Microsoft's P.R. department chartered a boat ladened with Xbox 360 advertisements to float past the biggest Sony launch event.

 

I'm with the French on this. The PS3 is a ridiculously overhyped, overpriced paperweight. Someone should have told Sony that to sell a games console they actually need some, y'know, games for it. The second it was clear that Grand Theft Auto IV and the new Gran Turismo wouldn't be out for over 6 months after release, any vague reason for buying the console on release disappeared.

Haha, that's funny. Not much action going on here either when they got launched. They cost about $1000 here, though. :evil:

Not only that, the exclusive titles are jumping ship. Why buy the ps3 when GTA4 and FF games can be bought for the 360?

Yeah, about the only one left now is Metal Gear Solid.

Whilst not as bad as France, the UK launch wasn't exactly a roaring success either.

 

Get this though. If you queued up all night and got a PS3 at midnight on day of release at the Virgin Megastore in Oxford Street, London, you got a free £2,500 Sony Hi-Def TV with it.

 

:shock:

I found a picture of the boat in the above newstory. Quite a funny story actually...

 

 

Microsoft pranked Sony's PlayStation 3 European launch pretty hard the other night.

 

Microsoft's marketing people hired a boat bearing Xbox logos to float up and down the river where Sony was showing off their new game system. That's a picture of it up above.

 

Xbox also reportedly handed out folding chairs with a website URL on 'em. It leads to http://www.shkyw.org/ . We can't vouch for the authenticity of this site, mind you. But the site is a light-hearted diss, welcoming Sony to "The Next Generation" and pointing out: "Sony, you're late."