European gamers miss out on 80GB PS3

Sony has admitted that it has no plans to ship its newly developed 80GB PlayStation 3 to European gamers. 

The news was confirmed by David Reeves, president and chief executive at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe.

"As for the 80GB console, there are markets like Korea where there is very high broadband penetration and the people there are used to downloading content, so they require a certain size hard drive," he said.

"But at the moment we do not see a requirement for launching this version in Europe. Certainly not in the foreseeable future."

The announcement came as Sony proudly claimed that the PlayStation 3 has now sold more than a one million units across the regions in Europe, Asia and Africa that use the PAL TV standard since its 23 March launch 10 weeks ago.

The sales figure was achieved in nine and a half weeks, faster than the original PlayStation and the PS2. The UK made up around 25 per cent of those sales.

The PS3 sold a record breaking 165,000 units in the first two days in the UK, the second-best debut after the handheld PlayStation Portable.

This is good news for Sony, after figures from Enterbrain revealed that Nintendo sold 251,794 Wii consoles in Japan in May, five times as many as the PS3.