Skip to content
Feb 15 / Ozymandias

[Edit] UK PS3 Preorders Slow?

PS3 preorders began in the UK today on both Amazon.co.uk and Play.com. We obviously don’t have any idea of what their launch allocations from Sony are, but apparently both sites are still taking pre-orders many hours after opening up shop. As of Thursday morning, Play.com has had their order site up for over eight hours… and both sites state they will take down the pre-order pages once their launch day allocation has been used up.

This seems to be in contradiction with a Digital Spy article stating that the PS3 is enjoying record pre-orders:

Advance orders for Sony’s highly anticipated PlayStation 3 console have broken all records, with high street stalwart Woolworths revealing it has been taking one order every 20 seconds during the past week.

The state-of-the-art PlayStation 3 will go head-to-head with Microsoft’s Xbox 360 when it hits the shops on March 23 and Woolies, one of the first stores to accept pre-orders, has admitted it has been staggered by the demand.

Gerry Berkley, Woolworths’ head of games, said, “It’s the hottest gaming system since the PS2 launched in 2000 – demand will outstrip supply.”

With a retail price of £425, the 60Gb PlayStation 3 costs £125 more in the UK than in the US, but this has failed to deter those determined to try out Sony’s latest dream machine.

Based on the hype of the article above, I’d have expected the online pre-orders to be sold out in minutes, maybe hours max. But based on the reality of the available games, and that a UK PS3 basically costs $800 (not $600 as in the US), I’m not terribly surprised.

I guess we’ll have to see. The only verifiable source of data at the moment is whether or not Amazon and Play continue allowing pre-orders. And obviously it’s in Sony’s best interest to invest heavily and get as many systems as possible to those retailers for this campaign. Will be interesting to see how much longer those pre-orders stay up. If we’re still able to order a week from now, I’d see it as another pebble on the scales tipping the PS3 toward a price cut sooner rather than later.

[Edit: Just added the quote below from Gamesindustry.biz (or actually a retailer) stating that pre-orders in the UK are doing really well. I still can't reconcile this statement with the fact that pre-orders are still being taken. Either PS3 supply is really, really good (which could be quite possible due to lack of demand in the US) and UK consumers really want it, or there's some hyping going on as retailers try to fan up a flame. Guess we'll see soon enough.]

Online retailer Play.com is taking six times more pre-orders than it received for PlayStation 3 than Xbox 360 – and 15 times more than the Nintendo Wii.

That’s according to head of games Gian Luzio, who told GamesIndustry.biz that PS3 is “the most pre-ordered console yet” for Play. The retailer is offering a GBP 524.99 bundle which includes first-party titles MotorStorm, Resistance: Fall of Man and Genji.

Related posts:

  1. [Edit] UK PS3 Preorders do indeed appear to be slow…

Comments are closed.

Filed under Uncategorized
  • http://blogs.artinsoft.net/ocalvo Oscar Calvo

    First comment!!

    At this point (and given the eBay fenomena) I don’t find this unexpected.

  • Kit

    Its just classic "rip-off" Britain at its best. I would love to hear them justify the extra $200. It makes no difference to me though… I never intended to buy a PS3… i just feel sorry for the mugs that do buy it.

    Its nothing to do with any kind of fanboydom… Its just not worth the price (Sure, it hs blu-ray, but thats a bit far off for 90% of the country in my opinion… nothing wrong with DVDs). Frankly, the 360 is only now becoming worth the price i paid at launch. Endless shoddy games make you wonder why you bothered giving into the hype machine.

    Sorry if I am overly negative… but thats just me being disappointed with the current state of the industry. No offence Ozy…

  • Anonymous

    Re: "Frankly, the 360 is only now becoming worth the price i paid at launch. Endless shoddy games make you wonder why you bothered giving into the hype machine."

    So I’m curious which games disappointed you on 360, and which you thought were worthy? Just curious! :)

  • Opticon

    gameplay.co.uk are also taking orders

  • Deano

    Apparently Argos were doing the Premium 360 for £249 recently.

    So for me to get a PS3 that offers largely similar experience to the 360 they would have to drop the price by £175 for me to be interested.  Actually it would be even more, given that they don’t bundle an HD cable.

    I’m of the opinion that a next-gen Wipeout would be fun (but then I thought so on the PS2 and look how bad Wipeout was on that) along with Gran Turismo, but good lord, I’m not made of money.

  • Maynard

    When I see "record SALES" I’ll be impressed.  Otherwise, I feel this is just another skewing of the numbers somehow by Sony.  

    Just like how they gave away a bunch of blu-ray movies with the ps3, counted those as sold units – then went on to brag about how many blu-ray movies they sold in January.  They’re doing the same thing in the UK with the 1st 500,00 to register their PS3 getting a Bond movie.  Then they’ll turn around and say they sold 500,000 Bond movies.

    I’m sure MS does the same thing, but they’re a little more sneaky about it.

  • nopants727

    Just checked Amazon.co.uk and they’re not taking more pre-orders until Friday 16.  425 BPS is a might steep price tag.

  • ㅉㅉㅉ

    there are always articles related to ps3 unrest. this is someone who is working on 360 project so expect them to cast positive light on their products.

  • http://farrmark.spaces.live.com/ Farrmark

    I’ve just gone over to Play.com and they still seem to be allowing people to "buy" a PS3….

  • http://www.wackonews.com Antonious

    I’m not sure that this COULD be true. Seems like over-hyping.

  • Trellium

    When they say they are taking orders several times those of the other consoles, I think it just means that the other consoles were more limited in availability during their European launches. After all, both MS and Nintendo had included Europe as part of their launch, not almost 5 months later.

  • Aedrin

    "there are always articles related to ps3 unrest. this is someone who is working on 360 project so expect them to cast positive light on their products."

    I think everyone knew this. Although Ozy is never as biased as PS3 fanboys or Sony executives.

  • http://userrankings.com/ Jim

    "Woolworths revealing it has been taking one order every 20 seconds during the past week."

    Another way to say 15.000 consoles pre-ordered per week.

    7 days open, 12 hours a day means:

    7 x 12 x 60 x 60 = 302400 seconds

    302400 / 20 = 15120 PS3s per week (which is a low number).

  • ni9ht 5ta1k3r

    PS3 is a bit of a downer really.

  • the5thchild

    Doesn’t really have to do with the post, but did you also see how they are trying to "advertise" the PS3 in one retail outlet in Australia?

    http://www.2old2play.com/News/Fake_PS3_Display_is_Actually_Xbox_360

    Check it out. :)

  • 10

    the price difference came from the europeen taxes…

    anyway who wan t to buy a ps3 at this point????

  • ShapeGSX

    Jim, where did you see those calculations?  I posted them originally on AVSForum and then re-posted them on Kotaku.  Not that they are hard to come up with, just that they are identical to what I calculated, and you gotta take a stab at the amount of time they are open. We both took the same stab. :)

    Just wondering if you read them there.

    Anyway, yeah, I’m not terribly impressed with an order every 20 seconds for a large chain store.  But it sure does sound impressive when it is put that way.

  • corleone

    to expensive , not enough good games (defo no system sellers).

    cant see it doing to well untill we get sommit half decent to play on it.

  • George

    Guys come on. This is probably my first and most expensive purchase ever with earnings from me first newspaper job. WEll forget that, just let me know, it may not be worth the money now but what about the console and its games? I guess my only idea behind pre ordering it is that i wanted to have the very first console here in Ireland, and i’m also writing aout it for the irish independant. Don’t make me cry. Let me know! If you could afford it would you buy it and why?

  • http://shimpu.vox.com Daniel

    Interesting to see how the retailers are keen to tell the customers how well their pre-orders are going. "Dudes, demand is huuuuge. Better buy one or even better two, so you have one at laaaaunch. Giant crabs!"

    Batman, enter the hype-machine!!

  • Porktree

    Crab people, Crab people.  That’s who’s doing the pre-ordering.  And once the crab people have the technology behind the ps3, there will be no stopping their rise to the earths surface and eventual reign over all of humanity.  If you love freedom it’s you’re duty as a human being to by a ps3 and save earth from the crab people.  If you don’t believe me, just ask Sony.

  • RealWeaponX

    "Online retailer Play.com is taking six times more pre-orders than it received for PlayStation 3 than Xbox 360"

    Is this the same play.com that couldn’t supply all the 360s it took pre-orders for? :P

  • hock

    what does the 360 cost in england?

  • Samisa

    £280 for the Premium system, £200 for the Core system.

  • Trellium

    "£280 for the Premium system, £200 for the Core system."

    I thought the core will not be sold in England (nor anywhere outside of North America and Japan), and the price was GBP 425.

  • Samisa

    They’re the 360 costs, as asked by the poster before me.

  • Strifer

    Who cares?

    Was this really worthy of a post?

  • Aedrin

    "Who cares?

    Was this really worthy of a post?"

    As witnessed by the reply to this post, many do.

    And that of course makes it an obvious yes.