European PS3 delay, Grr! Options

[Mata]

Bah. Gi's a job!

[oobunnie]

How much are the PS3's going to be going for over there anyway? When last I checked into prices here it was in the 500 to 600 range depending on which model you wanted. So thats like what $250 to $300 pounds. If the price difference is so much then why not buy it from another country?

I pretty much decided I would buy a new gaming system on a need it to play atleast a couple fancy new games basis, but so far the urge hasn't come up. What they need to do is get a bunch of good movies they can turn into fun games like Lord of the Rings, or X-men. Except the Da Vinci code type movies. Bad movie; even way worse game. I believe now I shall go back into the corner to grumble about that stupid game... have to be bloody psychic to figure out some of their symbol replacement puzzles. How are you supposed to replace an entire paragraph worth of symbols with letters if you weren't give any real clues anyway?! I shouldn't have just stoped playing it, I should have broke it into many little bits to release my anger over the waste of money and time.

[Mata]

PS3 Premium
[Country] [ USD ] [ EUR ] [ GBP ]
[US: 599] [=599=] [ 467 ] [ 317 ]
[Eur:599] [ 768 ] [=599=] [ 406 ]
[UK: 425] [ 803 ] [ 627 ] [=425=]

For comparison:

Xbox360 Premium
[Country] [ USD ] [ EUR ] [ GBP ]
[US: 399] [=399=] [ 311 ] [ 211 ]
[Eur:399] [ 512 ] [=399=] [ 271 ]
[UK: 279] [ 527 ] [ 411 ] [=279=]

If we import the machine then we have shipping costs and usually there will be import tax, which would make it cost something approaching the official price (assuming the box was noticed by customs, but I am pretty sure that they wil be looking out for this).

I've seen that The Earth Defense Force X (The Chikyuu Boeigun X) is going to be released for the 360, and this is the first time that I've seen something that I'm really interested in playing on it.

I suspect that I'll just wait for the PS3 prices to go down and get one after the drop. I can't justify £425 for a console unless I have a serious turnaround in my finances over the next few months! When you include the price of games, and whatever accesssories that are needed, then it would not be astonishing to be spending around £500+ for that first shot. That's silly money, and I suspect that many other people are going to agree with me on this one. If the 360 would play my old PS2 games then I'd buy that instead, but there's only room for one big ugly box under my machine and I've got too many games tied to the system to change brands. It's a mark of how baly $ony seem to be doing that I'm tempted to go for the 360 anyway.

The thing that gets me is that the reason/justification for the additional cost and the delays is the inclusion of a Blu-Ray drive in the machine. If the machine had released back in the spring (as originally planned) then maybe this would have been a cool benefit, but in the meantime HD DVD has had a very good head-start. HD DVD, while having an awkward acronym, also has a name that people understand: it's DVD, in HD. Simple. 'Blu-Ray' sounds a lot like 'blurry', and so perhaps should have been thought out more carefully! It sounds silly, but these are the kind of things that make the difference when there is very little percieved value in one brand over the other.

Trying to convince consumers that Blu-Ray is better for them and worth the extra money is going to be difficult. The 360 is using DVD technology, and producing some very nice results with it, so what is the advantage to consumers to have the Blu-Ray in the PS3?

From another angle, the PS3 might sell on the basis of being a cheap Blu-Ray player, but I'm still not sure that people, outside of techie early-adopters, are prepared to start placing their money on who is going to win our generation's VHS v.s Betamax. Assuming that people aren't going to be rushing to the shops thinking 'I have to get a Blu-Ray player' then the integration of Blu-Ray into the machine won't be a great benefit. Additionally, $ony need to do a better job with making the PS3 a good movie player than they did with the PS2 (which had noisy fans and had a horrible user interface) otherwise the Blu-Ray effort will be wasted.

[Sir Psycho Sexy]

I'm fairly sure you don't pay import tax if it's marked as a gift.

[Felander]

I'm fairly sure you don't pay import tax if it's marked as a gift.

The UK is exempt from that rule - you have to mark the total price on the top of the package nevertheless, so are still charged import tax.

That is, if tshirthell.com informed me correctly, the bastards. ¬_¬

[Mata]

Yep, you still pay import tax on things marked as gifts, but only if the value is over £18 (which the PS3 clearly is). I suspect customs are going to be opening as many PS3 sized boxes as they can before Christmas to make sure that they get the duties.

This said, marking a box 'gift' does give you a greater chance that they won't bother charging tax. Even though a recent item sent to me from the US was marked as being worth $80 they didn't ask me for any money. Despite this bit of luck, I would guess that it probably depends on how much of a busy time they're having, whether you get away with it or not.