All quiet on the Australasian front…

The PSP was launched in Australia today, and according to retailers, you’d think it was the second coming. PSP posters everywhere, merchadise out the front to display, brochures galore, annoying ads on TV –

And people really don’t seem interested. Seriously, I remember when the Nintendo DS was launched, you had to have a preorder to get one. EB was packed when I went it to pick mine up – it looked like just another normal day in there today.

A pretty inauspicious start for the system in Australia – in a nice surprise twist, though, the Australian UMDs work in my imported US PSP. Prices are also decent – AU$22 for UMD movies, AU$65 for games. I was expecting a lot higher, considering DS games retail for about AU$80. In case you’re wondering, the system was released for AU$399. I’m pretty happy I picked mine up a month ago for AU$420, and a game for AU$50. All in all, I spent $5 to get it early – not a bad trade.

To any Aussie (and European) shriners debating over whether they’re going to spend their money on Sony’s shiny new portable, I highly recommend it – it finally feels like gaming, if you know what I mean. When I play a game on my PSP, it’s like playing a game on my PS2 – the DS still had the whole ‘mini-game’ feel to it.

The PSP is yet to reach my town, being tiny and rubbish and all. I may head up to EB games tomorrow or the next and have a look for one, I’ve been interested in buying it for a while.

The lack of sales on the launch in Australia probably means a whole bunch of people imported their PSP already.

I mean, gamers in Australia usually import things anyway, given that it takes forever for anything to be released there, right?

On a totally different subject, I think Johnny Depp looks like a child molester. More so in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

PSP went live here aswell, and it’s enjoying a rather large fandom, I think the hype for the PSP here is bigger then for the DS. And it should be, it’s FAR more impressive then the DS and has over a dozen titles (good! titles) to go with it’s release.

The only thing I’ve really heard about it is an article in the paper complaining about how we’re paying �50 more for it than the USA or Japan and �10 more than the rest of Europe.

Same price and Australia though and �2 less than New Zealand.

The lack of sales on the launch in Australia probably means a whole bunch of people imported their PSP already.

I mean, gamers in Australia usually import things anyway, given that it takes forever for anything to be released there, right?

That could be quite a large part of it – according to Sony’s lawsuit against Hong-Kong based importer Lik-Sang, over 250 000 US and JAP PSPs have already been exported to Europe – that’s a quarter of their target sales for the launch window.