Er, you know that September 10th, €99 (about £78) PlayTV launch announced by David Reeves? Well, turns out that the Sony Europe president jumped the gun or the product's been dragged through a trough of delay. Whatever the case, Sony Europe told Eurogamer that the PS3 TV tuner / DVR add-on will launch on the 19th of September now and cost a bit less at just 70 Quid. It's also said to be HD ready should local DVB-T broadcasters decide to throw that switch.

[Via PS3 Fanboy, thanks Jimb]

So much for early 2008 or even July for that matter. Sony's David Reeves now confirms that PlayTV -- the €99 PS3 TV tuner / DVR add-on -- will hit the UK on September 10th. The service will then march onto the continent before completing the European rollout in December -- Australia and New Zealand get theirs in January or February. Notably, the service will in fact record television in the background without interrupting your regularly scheduled gaming regimen thanks to the recent 2.41 firmware PS3 update. Phew, for a moment we felt threatened by a lack of manufactured distractions.

[Via gamesindustry.biz]

Although Sony announced that the updated 80GB PS3 "Core" configuration would come to the States in September, it looks like other parts of the world will be getting it a little earlier -- Sony Computer Entertainment Europe chief David Reeves told reporters last night that the new SKU would hit Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Australia and New Zealand on August 27th. Worldwide pricing wasn't announced, but Sony confirmed that the new model would cost £299 in Britain and €399 in Europe. Sadly, it doesn't look like the Playstation Store's new video service will be making the trip anytime soon, but Reeves said that Sony is "working on it." That's great -- we're still more interested in a 60GB launch console, though.


[Thanks, Matt]

Sony Europe president David Reeves has never been one to shy away from making bold statements in the past, and he's now come out and weighed in on another touchy subject, with him flatly telling attendees at the DevStation conference in London that "there is a piracy problem on the PSP." What's more, Reeves went so far as to admit that it "sometimes fuels the growth of hardware sales, but that "on balance", Sony is "not happy about it." To that end, Reeves says that Sony will soon be unveiling new ways to combat piracy on the handheld, although he unsurprisingly isn't getting a whole lot more specific than that at the moment.

[Via PSP Fanboy]

Apparently Sony has decided to start both hangin' tough and unleashing the fury in the console wars, at least in Europe. According to SCEE president, CEO, and player-hater David Reeves, 2008 will be the year that the PlayStation 3 takes the gloves off and makes a nasty dent in the UK games market, amongst others. While not specifying official sales numbers for the machine, Reeves stated that the company has sold over a million systems in December across PAL territories, and went on to say that in some markets like Switzerland and France, the PS3's installed base outnumbers the Xbox 360's. Of course, it's easy to find small victories like monthly sales figures, but Sony's really going to have to break out the BFGs if it wants to tackle the big boys.

[Via Pocket-lint]

In an interview with Norway's Dabladet, David Reeves, president of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, reiterated that a move from the 60GB to an 80GB PS3 didn't make sense for Europe. Unlike the US and S.Korea, "going up 20GB is not worth it." We know, that's a bitter pill for our more culturally astute gaming brethren to swallow. Still, take heart as Reeves went on to say that, "if you double it, it's worth it. So maybe you'll see something a bit later." Right, that's 120GB if we take his words literally. Of course, these bumps are inevitable, so some specific timing would certainly be appreciated. In defense of launching the new Starter Pack bundles (a 60GB PS3 with two Sixaxis pads and two first party games) instead of price cuts for Europe, Reeves claims that consumers in PAL territories are more concerned with "added value." Riiiight. Of course, this is the same man who said "the name of the game is not market share" only to predict that the PS3 will be "the winner" by March 08. In other words, anything can happen.

[Via The Inquirer]

European gamers hoping to score a PS3 with a larger-than-60GB hard drive had better bust out their screwdrivers -- Sony Computer Entertainment Europe president David Reeves isn't planning on selling that 80GB PS3 in your hood anytime soon. Writing for MCV, Reeves says the larger hard drive only makes sense in a market like South Korea, which has "very high broadband penetration and the people there are used to downloading content, so they require a certain size hard drive." Ouch, way to underestimate your customers -- better start downloading more movies, Europe. Reeves goes on to say that he doesn't "feel" competing with Xbox Live since Sony is in a "different stadium," and that it doesn't have "eyes on the competition in any way." We're not going to tackle that one, except to point out that if Sony was looking at the competition, it might notice that 120GB hard drive said competition now has available.

[Via PS3 Fanboy]

We've been scratching our heads over all the wild Sony moves during the past few months -- with pricing themselves almost out of the game right at the top of our list -- but we'd been apparently laboring under a false assumption. Silly us, we thought Sony was planning on grabbing market share in this console generation, but we were oh so wrong. "The name of the game is not market share, it's how fast we can grow the industry," says David Reeves, head of Sony Europe, who went on to say "We want to try and double digital entertainment in the next five to six years. Whether we have 40, 50, or 60 per cent market share is not that important." Good to know guys, we're really sorry for getting on your case about all this stuff, we had no idea you're not feeling so competitive this time around. As a side note, Molly Smith, Sony's SCEA PR chief who was brought on shortly after the launch of the PS1, has recently and unexpectedly resigned her post, no word why, but we're sure she's glad to not be dealing with this little sound bite.

Read - Sony not concerned with market share
Read - PlayStation PR chief resigns