Report: 150,000 PS3s For UK Launch

According to a report in the Official UK PlayStation magazine cited on German website Gamefront.de, the publication is claiming that Sony will make available somewhere around 150,000 PlayStation 3 consoles for the British launch of the system on November 17th, 2006. Although Sony has previously announced that two million units of the console will be made available for the global launch in November (the console launches on November 17th in all major Western markets, and November 11th in Japan), it has never broken down this figure into individual territories. The figure of 150,000 seems somewhat low if taken as a percentage of the global market, of which the UK market currently accounts for 13.3 percent in software terms. By this rationale the figure should be around 100,000 more, with approximately 300,000 for Japan and around 800,000 for the USA. The UK’s noted loyalty towards the PlayStation brand however may convince Sony executives that they can afford to divert more hardware units to other territories in the short term, if this early figure turns out to hold veracity. It is also unclear whether the preliminary figure represents both versions of the PlayStation 3, with Sony hinting, but not confirming, that only the more expensive 60Gb hard drive version of the system will be sold in Europe.