Italy breaks the street date on the PS3

by Nick Doerr { Mar 21st 2007 at 1:30PM }

Competitive businesses are pretty crazy, especially when they go so far as to defy the gods of Sony and release the PlayStation 3 earlier than they're supposed to. Italian retailer Darty took out ads for a 7PM Wednesday release (that's today... according to the time zones on my phone, about one hour away from now (it's 1PM for me)), a few days ahead of the scheduled Friday launch.

Other stores have launched similar plans -- competitor Media World launched the PS3 at 9AM today. GameStop stores don't want to, but say they may be forced to release early as well to stay in the game.

Sony is pretty disappointed. They said this about the ordeal: "[we are] deeply disappointed by the unilateral decision" and are "carefully consider[ing] all available options in relation to retailers who have commenced sale of PlayStation 3 prior to 23rd March 2007." Interesting how Joystiq left off the last part of the quote, thinking it said "retaliation"... although Sony probably will retaliate somehow.

[via Joystiq]

Tags: PlayStation 3, Playstation3, PS3, Sony

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

SuicideNinja @ Mar 21st 2007 2:25PM

They need to hurry it up so I can recover my username. I can't recover my original since "The PS3 hasn't launched in your area yet!". Lame. That's what I get for signing up early and for England I guess.

Has anyone noticed that "breaking street dates" seems to be becoming more common? It happened with DS Lites and Wii's, too. I don't really see the importance of waiting until a specific day if the consoles are available now, but I'm sure there's something. Then again, consumers are losing patience thanks to the internet.

Retaliating would be somewhat stupid, wouldn't it? They need to infect as many users as possible, quickly. Obviously, they want to keep control...but they don't seem to be in much of position to be frivolous.