UK PS3 Pre-Orders a Record Breaker or Not?

February 13th, 2007, 21:39 Posted By: wraggster

Digital Spy is reporting that pre-orders for the Playstation 3 in the UK has "broken all records, with high street stalwart Woolworths revealing it has been taking one order every 20 seconds during the past week."

The head of games for the retailer called the console the hottest gaming system since the PS2.

But then you look at Charles Arthur's anecdotal story of PS3 sales in the UK for the Guardian's Gamesblog.

At a local games shop there's a notice suggesting people pre-order their PS3 before March 29, when.. you know.
So how's business, I asked the bloke behind the counter? What sort of interest is there in the PS3 compared to the Xbox 360 and Wii?

Very low, he replied: with, what, six weeks to go before the launch, half their pre-allocation had not been taken up. (Of course you could go glass-half-full and say half had been.) That compared to pretty much all taken up for the Xbox 360 a year ago, and huge over-demand for the Wii before last Christmas.

So what sort of ratio of demand was there between the PS3, Wii and Xbox 360? Demand for the Wii was more than 10x greater than for the PS3, he said, and had been about 5x that of the Xbox. And he personally didn't think any of the PS3 launch games were worth the bother. "Sony has been promising this for two years and people have just got bored with it," he suggested.

So which is it? Are UK gamers fevered over or bored with the PS3 launch, or is it a bit of both with a dash of eBay grey market boosting the early demand?

via kotaku

There are 15 comments - Join In and Discuss Here