Seems like 90% of consoles sold in first four days . i think sony are going to do a lot better than people realised in Europe . They even sold 6x what the ps2 sold in Portugal at launch . keep it up Europe lets maintain the three way race equals more choice for us all . http://gameover.sapo.pt/article.html?id=32258

Goodigood

Now we just have to find out how many consoles that amounts to, why wouldn't the guy boast about the absolute number if it was big? Anyone care to make an educated guess? PS: Regarding "6x the number of PS2 sold at launch", I remember that it was almost impossible even to pre-order to a PS2 at that time, I guess there were very few.

You know not to down the ps3 launch in Europe but the records really mean nothing due to the fact that every other console has very little stock at launch and sells out right away. Despite the numbers and sales being healthy I feel like we won't know for sure what the ps3's future holds in Europe for another couple of months. And being that sales are lackluster in Japan and America, I don't imagine Europe will be a huge support pillar, unless someone knows of another system that sold a little weak in Japan and America but was huge in Europe? Unless Europe is a temporary support until ps3 can bolster its sales in other territories. We'll have to wait and see.

The thing with Europe is that it's always been the most shunned market... Japan was traditionally the biggest game producer... the US was traditionally the biggest consumer... as these trends shifted and publishers like EA and Ubisoft became the biggest producers, that trend shifted. Towards the end of the last generation, Europe started getting some decent attention (even getting a coupla games *before* the other markets), and because of this, their userbase should theoretically be growing faster than the other two major markets. Theoretically, if this launch really is a sign of popularity and not just increased supply, Sony could capture a large new market.

Well, even in this one sentence you already made a big mistake! There is no European market!!! While products can be exchangend easily the markets are totally different and behave independently of each other. A success in one country can be a totaldisaster in the next. So marketing is a bit tricky in Europe. You have to see very market as its own entity. Not only in marketting, even the laws differ. As an example, every game must be rated in Germany and although sometimes publishers already went an extra mile and gave Enemies green blood, the politicians are discussing if they shouldn't raise these laws even further...

Amiga systems were pretty big in Europe but never seemed to catch on in other places, and they at least tried in the US. Dunno about Japan. And yes, the problem with Europe is that it's a collection of several smaller countries wiht multiple laws to adhere to an multiple ad campaigns are necessary. They also have four times the translation work necessary to release in Europe. All in all, it's a pain in the ass to work there and they haven't really been good to anyone but Sony for the last decade, which is why they are "shunned".

the european market is the biggest market for sony, its were playstation has the largest market share nintendo´s home consoles have always done pretty badly in europe manly because of a lack of effort from nintendo´s part they are working very hard this time with the wii and its paying off microsoft is trying hard to take a hold of europe but its not has easy has america were a couple of good shooters and madden is enough to make huge sales sony has always been the publisher that treats europe better, with games localized to allot of countries, even portugal that is a small country and with very little significance in the big picture gets games fully localized in portuguese with voice acting and all, its for things like these that they have the portugese market with some 80 percent market share or even more

More or less all of Europe gets game releases on the same day. They work on the same TV and electricity standards. Someone who bought a console in Germany can play games bought in the UK with a controller he bought in Sweden. Regardless of legal and cultural differences (what, you don't think each individual state doesn't have its own laws and cultures?), Europe is one market. Hell, here in Israel, we get stuff later than *Europe,* and I wouldn't think twice about someone calling Israel part of the European market.

Yes, but that's because its a law. In fact for the DVD they originally planned more regions, till they learned that such a medium would be illegal in Europe. And this killed this point a bit. From the view point of a US company Europe could be ddescribed more as a crazy bunch of small parts, that each has their own demands. As an example: try to release a film in Germany that is not dubbed into German and you can only target for a very small niche. Under normal circumstances everything must be dubbed. And you must be careful who you hire for the dub, because most bigger actors have their dedicated german voice. They must hire this dubbing actors or they will loose many customers. But you are totally missing the point. If you say this console is big in Europe this has in reallity no meaning. It is much more important to watch the different markets. Leading console of Germany, France, Italy or UK has much more meaning than the European number. Why? Well, if you have 60% market share in Europe, it would be rather stupid to put your resources to the whole EU. It is much more sensible to watch the numbers closely. For countries whith 10 to 20% you don't need significant resources, it is much more important to target the countriers, where you have 80% market share. Well, that's another difference too. In fact if I think about Europe it means something like the Euro Zone and perhaps Swiss but nothing else (No UK is on the outside too). I think this is one of the biggest difficulties for the EU too. While they made the EU bigger and bigger, the people no longer achknowledge this idea.