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The Story Of Doodle Jump: Brotherly Love And Digital Snacks Last month, we heard about a deal whereby Sony Australia would give away a free copy of LittleBigPlanet with every PS3 sold. It wasn’t a bundle or anything, you’d pay what you normally pay for a PS3, and just get LittleBigPlanet for free. Well, that deal’s now been expanded, with SCE Australia announcing that customers will, when buying a new PlayStation 3 console, be able to choose one of four games: LittleBigPlanet, SingStar Abba, MotorStorm 2 or Resistance 2. That should have just about everyone covered…if you can’t find something on that list you like, you should possibly reconsider why it is exactly you’re buying a PS3.
And not as a hardware bundle. Just as a general, Christmas-y giveaway. The deal was supposed to kick off this Thursday, October 23. It obviously, now, will not be. It’ll instead be kicking off a little later, whenever SCE Australia can confirm a local release date. The deal will see every single PlayStation 3 console sold in the country during the holiday season come with a copy of LittleBigPlanet. A free copy of LittleBigPlanet. Even if you don’t want one. Good news for Aussies in the market for a PS3! Bad news for LittleBigPlanet’s pre-owned market value.
Look, we knew it was coming. Retailers, especially big retailers like Harvey Norman, don’t muck around with these kind of things. But it’s nice to know that we’ve now got new pictures of the GTA IV/PlayStation 3 bundle, as well as an officially-endorsed recommended retail price. It’ll go for $749.95 but while the game’s due on April 29, this bundle won’t be ready until May 1. Can you stand the wait, Australia?
There’s been no official announcements from SCE Australia, but Aussie journo Jason Hill is reporting that Sony’s PlayTV service for the PS3, which allows PS3 users to use their console as a HD personal video recorder, will be available in Australia in early 2008. Hopefully. Only potential snag is a conflict between some of Australia’s commercial TV networks, who have been reluctant to allow PVRs access to their program scheduling, but that shouldn’t pose too big a problem. Hopefully. It’s playtime [The Sydney Morning Herald, thanks Lachlan!]
That Heavenly Sword/F1 PS3 starter pack? It’s official. Official for France, and France only. It’ll launch there on September 19, same day as Heavenly Sword. As for everywhere else, SCEE were most helpful in clearing up some of the muddly-duddlys surrounding these bundle packs, telling us: To remove any confusion, the Starter Pack, with an extra controller and two titles is a SCEE wide initiative and has been launched in all of our territories. The choice of which titles to include in the Starter Pack, and the freedom to change the titles is up to the individual markets based on their unique market conditions.
OK. So from here until they stop offering these packs, expect each SCEE territory (and that’ll include Australia and NZ) to start mixing and matching their bundled games. Who knows, one of them might even get it right (HINT: Pro Evo will go down well).
Poster by the name of Robinspain over at GAF has thrown up an image of what looks like the next PAL PS3 starter pack. If you remember, the current pack, which includes Motorstorm, Resistance and a second controller, was a “limited offer”, due to expire in Europe “soon” and in Australia after August 31. So the timing’s right. This pic shows Heavenly Sword and F1 to be the bundled games, the former to drive sales, the latter to, I don’t know, clear the warehouse’s stock. When asked about the bundle, SCE Australia would only say “we have no announcements regarding any new retail offerings in Australia”, while SCEE are sleeping, so we’ll update when we hear back from them. SCEE announces NEW ps3 STARTER PACK [Robinspain @ NeoGAF]
