On Friday AusGamers followed Sony Australia to the eGames expo at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre to look at their upcoming games and listen to a few marketing tidbits surrounding the PS3 this holiday season. While there wasn't a plethora of announcements to soak up, there was more than enough to sate the PS3 owners out there in regards to solid release dates and affirmation from Sony they made the right decision in investing in the big black box.

For one, Australian Public Relations Manager, Adrian Christie, told us the latest GFK data shows the PS3 has broken 100,000 units sold through in Australia, a magical figure that proves the PS3 is making headway here. Moreover, 40% of purchasers are registering for the PSN, which also shows Sony's online service is actually moving forward.

Beyond the console stuff, we were also told two of the holiday season's biggest releases, Singstar for PS3 and Unchartered: Drakes Fortune, were only a few weeks away; both launching on December 6. Singstar's first batch of downloadable tracks will be made available just before Christmas on December 17, with each track costing you AU$2.49. A steady flow of downloadable content will then be made available consistently onward from the PlayStation Store. Beyond their in-house stuff, the PS3 also has both Haze (exclusive) and Assassin's Creed from Ubisoft (stay tuned for our review later today), the latter of which is being pushed more for the PS3 than the 360 (it's available on both, though), showing the PS3 has more than enough steam to start catching up to the competition. Stay tuned over the next few days as we look at some of Sony's big releases, including Ratchet and Clank which will feature insights from a couple of guys from Insomniac Games who were available for us to grill at the eGames Expo.

Let me take those statistics another way:

100,000 people have bought a console because it has BluRay, but aren't actually buying games. We also feel the need to have to point out this sales figure, because really who does anyone actually know who owns one of these bricks - as opposed to Wiis who you'll see people walking out of stores with all the time.
40% of people are having to register for PSN because they're basically locked into it.
They'll be releasing more tracks for Singstar overpriced as per usual. There'll be more downloadable content - which you'll have to pay for.
They'll need to rely on sales of a popular game available on other consoles, otherwise people won't bother buying the PS3 over something like XBox, because all the exclusive titles are s***.
Sony will be announcing some new games which noone has heard of or cares about, nor will they sell.


Did I get that translation more or less right?

Maybe. Or maybe it's just all that talk of Sony makes an article just ripe for pulling apart :)

40% of purchasers are registering for the PSN

If PSN is free, shouldn't that percentage be much higher?

If PSN is free, shouldn't that percentage be much higher?

As I'm so often told by PS3 owners..it is completely free. And yes, you would think the uptake would be just a bit higher in that case (how about 80%).

/Rofl @ Playstation's imminent demise.

I concur....that lump of s*** is going no where if BR doesn't win the format war.

probably cos PSN takes a while to sign up to lol. I imported a PS3 last week and it took quite a while to even set the thing up. It's pretty cool though and some decent games coming out for it, got my bro to pick up Ratchet and Uncharted the other day in the US. (uncharted has the craziest graphics, wow, I wasn't blown away from online media until I played the demo on my TV).

I also have a Wii and 360 and love them both too so leave the sony bashing, I too was like you and anti-sony (this is my first sony console) but there are just too many good PS2 titles to catch up on and the media functionality imo is better than the 360. Ps3 is in for the long haul I think, it will hopefully get better.

I'm thinking of getting a PS3 just so I can import Rock Band.

isnt rock band coming on the 360?

Yeah, but it doesn't come out here until some undisclosed time in the first quarter of next year, whereas its out now over in the US. Its region locked on 360 though, but games are region free on PS3.

Yeh, pretty good reason to get a PS3 over an Xbox 360 (there's not many so they should be noted when they exist :) It's pretty lame that region locking is still something we have to contend with, especially now our dollar is kicking ass and we're not seeing it translated into cheaper games.