Sony confirms plans for European PSX launch in 2004
The all singing, all dancing Sony super-console prepares for European launch with a Frankfurt showing at CEBIT this week, while SCEE finally gets solid on a release date.
Sony confirmed today that it is pushing to release PSX in Europe this year, as the console prepared to make its European debut at technology show CEBIT in Hannover, Germany.
"We can confirm that SCEE will be handling the sales and marketing for PSX," a Sony spokesperson told gi.biz this morning. "We are looking to launch it before the end of this year and will have more details soon."
While the on-the-record comments shied away from full commitment, insiders privately confirmed that PSX will definitely release in Europe before 2005.
A press release is expected on the matter of release date for the machine in the next 24 hours, specifically to coincide with PSX's European showing at the monster German tech fair, running from March 18-24. It's still unclear whether or not SCEE will confirm the 2004 date this week or at E3 in May.
Sony was unable to confirm this morning whether or not the PSX to be shown in Germany this Thursday was a European model or simply the Japanese console, which launched at the end of 2003.
PSX is a massively glorified PlayStation 2, capable of recording TV on its hard drive and coming equipped with a DVD writer.
No specific details have been made available as yet on the functionality of the PAL machine, although it's widely assumed that it will incorporate all the functions of the NTSC version as well as the lately released upgrade patch, including MP3 play-back and support for all image formats.