Not just the Brits but the whole of Europe compared to the US. When converted to Yen, the UK price is slightly cheaper than Europe but both are much more expensive than the US. Then again, it must be easier to export a product to a single mass market rather than a number os smaller ones.

@ how stupid are Sony to have the price at £249, its just completely daft in my opinion. Even if the arcade does go up to £159, thats still a whopping 90quid cheaper. I think will have to address this very soon (ie £199!)

The reason is simple, 250 British Pounds is about the same as 299 €.

This prevents other Europeans from importing from UK at lower cost (i.e. higher cost to Sony), and it makes other European retailers happy for the same reason.

@NJ5 I agree about the xchange but the fact is the 360 is about 1-1.5 million ahead in the UK. if Sony really want to close that gap they need to drop the price more because realistically the cut is only around £30, as u could always get the ps3 cheaper than 300

Dont underestimate the power of Top Gear!

@sully / kowenicki: True, it will be interesting to see the effect on UK sales compared to the other European countries and America.

Ideally I'm sure Microsoft would like to do what Sony did (same price for UK and the rest of Europe), but they may have some sales advantage from not doing so.

I don't think the Top Gear track will shift any gt5 units unless Top Gear test at GT5 extensively on the show and compare to the real track.

The drop will be about £50 as you will most likely see retailers selling it at £20 below the RRP as they did before.

Still, how big an effect that will have I don't know. It depends on how well Sony's value agrument holds up. The PS3 has great games, a blu-ray player, free online, free music videos on demand, a movie store from November ect (not to mention brand name) and £250 may be the point when consumers decide that is a great deal. I think you'll see a reasonable boost up until summer 2010 but excatly what I couldn't predict.

GT5 is pretty huge in the UK to be honest, which will only be added to if the Top Gear test track is advertised, or Top Gear show it in their next series - how can they not? It's their test track! In a game! I can imagine Jezza's thrilled/smug face now.

Well they did a ten minute clip on Gran Turismo 4 once... I think they will do a comparison between how fast Jezza can go round the test track in a Zonda on GT5 and The Stig going round the test track in a Zonda in real life.