A boat will ferry a special consignment of PlayStation 3s to the foot of the Eiffel Tower as hardcore gamers queue in the cold at special midnight openings across Europe when Sony's next-generation console hits stores on Friday.
"The launch of Playstation 3 will be the biggest video games console launch of all time", said Jim Batchelor, entertainment head at Britain's Woolworths' department store. "It will be bigger than the launch of the Nintendo Wii, the Xbox 360 and the previous Playstation," he added.
At least one man was shot in the chaotic US launch of the PS3 four months back, and punch-ups reported across the nation as gamers and profiteers scrambled for scarce stocks of the long-awaited machines. As the state-of-the-art consoles made their way onto Internet auction site eBay, prices rocketed into the thousands of dollars.
Of the million PS3 consoles that set off from China under high security three weeks ago for this week's launch, some 300,000 are destined for Britain and 100,000 for France, 60,000 of them pre-ordered, said Sony Computer Entertainment France.
"Our initial stock of Nintendo Wiis sold out in just seven minutes but our initial allocation of PlayStation 3 has been considerably higher and we have seen very strong pre-order sales on this console," said James Schall, videogames manager for Amazon.co.uk.
In Paris, enthusiasts who failed to book ahead are being offered a tiny consignment of 1,000 on board a boat by the landmark Eiffel Tower, while specialist stores such as Virgin Megastore are to open at midnight Thursday across the country.
In London the PS3, which was launched in Japan and the US in November and is equipped with a Cell microprocessor 40 times faster than PlayStation 2, will go on sale at midnight in Virgin Megastores.
But because of production costs, Sony is making available only its more expensive 60-gigabyte version for Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Australasia. The price tag is high - at 599 euros (780 dollars), 425 British pounds, 999.95 Australian dollars and 1,199.95 New Zealand dollars.
That makes it the most expensive of the new-generation video consoles, against 399 euros or 299 euros for versions of Microsoft's Xbox 360 and 249 euros for Nintendo's Wii.
"More than 90 percent of demand in Japan and the US is for this (60-gigabyte) model," said Georges Fornay, the European vice-president of Sony Computer Entertainment.
Fornay also told AFP that only 1,200 PlayStation 2 games would be compatible with the PS3, which comes with around 30 new games. PlayStation 3 consoles feature Internet browsers, wireless controllers with motion-sensing capabilities, and a Blu-ray DVD reader.
Electronics giant Sony released it last year only in the key North American and Asian markets where it was delayed about six months due to a glitch with the high-definition DVD player. The rollout in Europe was also pushed back until March due to production problems.
Sony hopes to sell six million by end March against 10.4 million Xbox 360s sold in a year and six million Wii consoles, which were launched last November.
PlayStations have long dominated the home video-game market, with the original version and PlayStation 2 selling more than 100 million each.
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