i took those prices from amazon.com and amazon.de. i understand there can be a lot of regional variations across the EU, even across stores within the same city!

@onna76_nl

NL is hardly small, total population of malta is 400,000 or less than den haag. countries like hungary (10mil) and romania (24mil) don’t have a store at all. my guess is that the number of units is simply not big enough yet to justify the cost of investment in infrastructure for a ps store in these places. XBL is not in these territories either.

i don’t believe a single EU store is feasible, because regardless of languages/currencies, publishers have different agreements, different strategies, and even have to deal with different certification processes for different countries. content passed for distribution in the UK might well not pass for distribution in germany, for example.

I somewhat agree with you on those points.
It’s I shame we’re missing out on a lot of cool stuff.

But my biggest concern is the limited (online) functionality, compared to the Xbox. Playing online games on the PS3 is a mess. Every game has a different approach to invites/joining games, there is no cross-game voicechat, no voicemessages.

Sony’s answer should’ve been Home, but that failed. And it will keep failing until Sony just brings the Game Launching-tool to the XMB, so you won’t have to be in Home to use it (You see, starting up a ‘game’ to launch into another game is just… stupid and time-consuming). And it should be mandatory.

However… I will never sell my PS3. The line-up is EXCELLENT. Man, I can’t wait for Uncharted 2, MAG, Heavy Rain, The Guardian and God of War 3!

Trust me, I just tried it, and it’s not.

Thanks for your reply but 1 out of 3 is not good. And then there are the issues with the different content in the store’s and the price differences. I’m done with it. I wanted to have a great machine where I could do everything on, and I’m prepaired to pay. I bought my PS3 day 1 for 600 euro’s but I’m very, very, very disapointed.

I ask because iPlayer doesn’t run too well in the PS3 browser, it’d be much better if there was just a proper app for it.

Firmware 3.00 is pretty nice as well (I guess you guys skipped 2.90 because 3.00 just sounded better on a conference? ), although I’m a bit dissapointed in the new features.

Come on guys, let’s be honest here. You know the #1 requested feature is cross-game voice/partychat. THAT should be your #1 priority.

I realize it’s not an easy feature to develop, but I’m sure you’ll find a way.

Personally, I’d suggest to use Skype and make it available for use while in-game. You just need to link your current Skype account to your PSN account, or create a new one, so we don’t have two seperate friendlists to choose from when we want to voicechat with someone.

Needless to say I find this offensive – the big countries get the latest consoles and the smaller ones, even if in the EU have to put up with old stuff. By the way I cannot even access home!

Not everyone enjoys accessing Home. Just upload the Gamecon press conference as normal and let us download it.

It would be one thing if it was streamed live in Home, but going there just to download it is annoying.

Nice one Jem/Home team.

Europeans pay 299 euros for an xbox pro.
Americans pay 299 dollars for an xbox pro.

Do microsoft think europeans are dumb?

you think the price-fixing is unique to sony?! every electronic/consumer products company has the same practice. look at the price of apple products in the US compared to europe.

also, $299 is the US price WITHOUT tax. 299 euros is the price WITH tax. VAT in EU is as high as 25% in some countries, so that would make the price without tax around 239 euros, or $337. yes, there’s still a difference, but it’s a lot smaller, and the difference allows for some variation in the exchange rates – the UK pound was worth over $2 a year ago, but is now only $1.65, yet the cost of games and consoles has remained the same here.

have fun with the xbox. don’t forget the extra 50 euros PER YEAR that you’ll pay to play online. not to mention that the 6.5gb per disc limit will become quite a handicap as time goes by..