Violence Mars PlayStation 3 Launch (News)

GamePro staff, GamePro

21/11/2006 09:53:04

A week after it first appeared in Japan, the PlayStation 3 went on sale in the U.S. and three other countries on Friday. The console is likely to have immediately sold out. Many stores stopped taking reservations weeks ago and the device is already selling for more than US $3,000 on the eBay.com online auction site. That's about three times its U.S. retail price of $599.

Demand for the console is high because Sony is short of the blue-laser diode that sits at the heart of the console's Blu-ray Disc drive. Without the diode, the console can't be completed, which forced Sony to scale back the launch. There were supposed to be about 2 million PlayStation 3 consoles ready for the worldwide launch, but that was cut to about 500,000 units.

There were reports of sporadic violence across the U.S. and Canada as people waited in line to snap up one of the consoles. The most serious reported incident happened in Putnam, Connecticut, where a man was shot while waiting for the console to go on sale.

Dozens of police were called to Boston's Copley Place Mall after security guards lost control of a crowd of about 400 people on Friday, and a 19-year-old man was injured after running into a pole while racing others to get a place in a queue outside a Wal-Mart store in Wisconsin. In Ottawa, Canada, one man was arrested for being intoxicated after a fight broke out at 2 a.m. Friday among people waiting for a game store to open, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.

The console also went on sale in Hong Kong and Taiwan on Friday. It will hit Europe and Australia in March 2007, according to Sony's current plans.