Het Britse Eurogamer komt met het nieuws dat er bij de lancering van de PlayStation 2 in Europa een nog groter tekort zal zijn dan verwacht. Voor de Britse markt zijn bij de introductie op 24 november maar 165.000 exemplaren gereserveerd, terwijl eerder het aantal van 200.000 werd genoemd. Ook voor de rest van de Europese markt zullen minder exemplaren beschikbaar zijn. Omdat de Europese Commissie een invoerheffing overweegt, zal de prijs ook nog een stukje hoger worden dan verwacht.
The international launch of the PlayStation 2 has proven to be something of a disaster for Sony, and almost everything that could go wrong has gone wrong. In the USA the initial allocation of consoles was slashed from a million to just 500,000, resulting in fights breaking out at some stores as the new system sold out within hours of its release, and the console changing hands on auction sites like eBay for five or ten times the usual retail price. Now things are starting to look grim for the European launch, with the UK's allocation of 200,000 consoles which were due between November 24th and Christmas now cut to 165,000. It's possible that the units are merely being shifted around within Europe, but it seems rather more likely that this is due to further supply shortages, and that as a result the allocation for the rest of Europe may drop as well.[...] And things just keep getting worse for Sony. Another report in CTW suggests that the European Commission will be trying to levy an additional 2.2% import duty on the PlayStation 2, which is already over-priced in much of Europe compared to the US and Japan.
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