PS3 Fanboy

There was an earthquake in Sichuan recently -- a pretty bad one. Corporations and individual people have been taking care of donations, including Sony Computer Entertainment Hong Kong. They have put together some eBay auctions for autographed PlayStation paraphernalia. All proceeds go to World Vision Hong Kong.

SiliconEra has put together a listing for the items and some of them are still without bids! The only problem is you have to be physically present in Hong Kong to claim these prizes. So if you want some pre-paid PlayStation Network cards signed by some pretty famous Sony folk, or a model, a singer, or an actress, go for it. It's for a good cause, but since it forces you to be in Hong Kong, it's a bit difficult to be the good Samaritan.

While the launch of Sony's PlayStation 3 in Korea has gotten a lot more blog-time here than you'd expect, it's because of the surprisingly different model they are receiving. An 80GB hard drive, downloadable content and video on demand support (TV shows, etc), lack of the Emotion Engine chip for emulation ... it's like a different console! Perhaps that's one of the reasons why consumers grabbed the system quicker than announcers would be able to talk about the available features.

If you read slowly, the time it took you to get to this paragraph is about the time it took for PS3's to sell out on a popular Korean home shopping channel. Putting 200 units up for pre-sale, the hosts of the show prepared to talk people into buying the expensive system by highlighting all the features. It wasn't necessary. All 200 systems were sold in under three minutes. Sony is amazed and baffled: they expect decent demand for the system now, but they didn't get to talk about what the system could do before they were all gone! Enjoy your PS3 launch next Tuesday, Korea. It seems you're ready for it.

You thought the PS3 was done launching, didn't you? You'd be wrong ... dead wrong. Or at least breathing heavily at the announcement that Sony plans to launch their PlayStation 3 in Korea this June. That's right, now you can snag your very own Korean PS3 at the low, low price of around 550,000 won (about $600). The launch is slated to be a 60GB-only event. No more of the puny 20GB, although if you're not into metal trim, you're out of luck since that's your only choice.

We give you a ballpark estimate of the price because SCEK isn't exactly sure about the final price or the model details (maybe there will be a few 20GB?), nor are they set up for a marketing campaign yet. But it's safe to assume that there won't be any 20GB models and the price, therefore, would reach a maximum of 600,000 won. Do we have any Korean readers out there? Do you guys plan to snag this device as soon as possible? What other places does the PS3 still need to launch in? Let us know if you live in such a place.