Sony Playstation II gelanceerd in Noord Amerika

Goed nieuws voor de consolers in Noord Amerika, de Playstation II verkoop is gisteren van start gegaan. Het plezier was echter maar van korte duur, de half miljoen PS2's elk 300 dollar kostend waren allemaal al s' ochtends vroeg op. Deze introductie van de Playstation II heeft ongetwijfeld leuke taferelen opgeleverd, zo stond er bijvoorbeeld in San Francisco een rij van 300 man voor de Playstation winkel :

The highly anticipated Sony PlayStation 2 has launched for a suggested retail price of US$299.99. With only 500,000 units available in its first shipment, the console sold out at most retail outlets across North America by early this morning. To commemorate the launch and to give their customers first access to the console, several retailers opened their doors at 12:01am this morning. The PlayStation store at the Metreon in San Francisco had a large turnout, with over 300 people - some camping out since early Wednesday morning. At midnight, Sony ushered in the PlayStation 2 era with a countdown. Surprisingly, despite the grave shortage and the fact that most of the people looking to buy a PlayStation 2 were turned away at virtually every retailer, the launch came off without any significant glitches.

[...] "Retail outlets reported today that they were sold out of PS2 consoles by 9am this morning," said Matt Gravett, game analyst for PC Data. "It's a definite measure of the hysteria around the PS2 that people are willing to buy software with no guarantee that they'll have hardware to play it. They're all revved up with no place to go."[break]Voorlopig zal het krijgen van een PS2 in de USA nog niet meevallen, er is simpelweg te veel vraaag en te weinig aanbod:[/break]The PlayStation 2 is in such high demand that Amazon.com sold out of all three of its PS2 bundles in a matter of minutes. Sony expects to ship 100,000 units a week through Christmas, for a total of 1.3 million units by the end of the holiday season. However, the console is expected to remain in short supply for several more weeks, as the demand seems to have far outpaced supply.