MARCH 2007 – The next-gen battle finally commences in earnest as the PS3 hits our shores, there’s a Crackdown on crime and it seems you may have a Snake in your pocket. Nick Thorpe does the time warp again, and returns with tales of yesterday’s gaming events
UK gamers finally got their chance to pick up the PlayStation 3 on 23 March, and Sony certainly pushed the boat out. The flagship Oxford Street branch of Virgin Megastores allowed players to camp out in advance of the midnight launch, and those in attendance were richly rewarded when Sony boss Phil Harrison announced that every customer would also be taking home a 46-inch HD television. One week later, Chart Track confirmed that almost 165,000 of the machines had been sold in just two days, making it the UK’s fastest-selling home console ever – though not the fastest-selling console overall, as sales fell just short of the 185,000 consoles sold during the PSP’s launch weekend a year and a half earlier. Resistance: Fall Of Man was the most popular launch game, followed by MotorStorm.
Despite the excitement over the new console’s launch, most of the early software was already covered in import form over the prior months. That left import reviews of UK launch game Virtua Fighter 5 for this month. Play’s bizarre review claimed “we don’t really like it that much” and “we’re no good at it”, and even went so far as to admit that, “We just haven’t got the time, and more crucially skill, to be able to judge with absolute assurance how the balance has been affected.” The game was still given 83%
