The PS3 price chart

NTLewest has managed to solidly screw up my connection for a number of days (it still isn’t working quite as quickly as would be expected for a 4Mbit connection), so sorry all. In the meantime, I’m going to bash the PS3 again, because Sony have just released the official prices for Europe and have explained their screwing of Europeans as being due to VAT and ‘retailers’ (never mind that most British retailers are desperate to offer discounts on everything else in order to compete with Tesco et al). So here’s a little comparison table for the 60GB version…

• USA: $599.00, €462.47, £303.69
• Continental Europe: €599.00, $775.82, £393.34 (29.5% increase on US price)
• Ireland: €629.00, $814.68, £413.04 (36% increase on US price, 5% increase on European price)
• UK: £425.00, $838.27, €647.21 (40% increase on US price, 8% increase on European price, 3% increase on Irish price)

Right. It’s all to do with VAT. No matter that the highest VAT rate in Europe is held by Denmark and Sweden at 25% (the lowest are Luxembourg and Cyprus at 15%), which doesn’t explain the hike. No matter that Sony have used the VAT excuse for their Irish price gouging despite the fact that the Irish rate is 21%. And no matter that the British are the most expensive of the lot, despite a 17.5% rate.

If Sony weren’t threatening importers, it would be cheaper to bring one over from the US even if you got stung by Customs. They’re all coming from the same factories in China through the same container ships going through the same places, and the PS3 has a full multi-voltage power supply. Plus, since you’re going to play it on a HDTV anyway, there isn’t even a PAL/NTSC issue.

No, Sony is ripping us off on price. It doesn’t help that they don’t have any good games yet either, really. Avoid until the games come and the price goes down, at least; at this rate, the PS3 deserves to be as unpopular in Europe as the Xbox360 is in Japan.