That's alot of quid or Stalin-dollars, or whatever they use in europe.

ummm that = what in us $??

just multiply by two and take a way a little bit to get dollars. So £700 is about $1380

much, verry much i ghues, don't underestimate the power of the pound.
549 punds is 1.081,50$, thats one heck of a price and that's 1.376,99$ for the 699 pound version.

sucks to be european!!!!
that's me :(

This comment was going to be about the £800 laptop I'm buying shortly that will play every PC game made over the next few years at the highest settings and be a multimedia Windows PC too, but then I realised that the PS3 has Linux. It just comes down being an early adopter when you take that into account - and that isn't a phase that Sony can avoid if they're going to do this.

I never thought I'd defend the PS3's price, but as long as you are actually going to be using it as the computer Krazy Ken and company keep calling it, £550 or even £700 isn't as terrible as it might seem. An expensive gamble, and one I would never take, but not an unreasonable price, all-up.

If you just want it for the games though...

Yeah, you need to keep in mind when comparing prices that the average income in the UK is higher than the US. For example:

Minimum wage (UK): £5.35/$10.01 (min. age 22)
Minimum wage (federal US): $5.15 (min. age ?)

Average per capita income (UK): £34,197/$67,151*
Average per capita income (US): $33,050

So on average Brits earn twice as much as the Americans, but as has been said, this is balanced by costs.Take a look at what the prices on Amazon look like:

XBox 360 Premium (UK): £275/$544
XBox 360 Premium (US): $400
Nintendo Wii (UK): £180/$356
Nintendo Wii (US): $250
Sony PSP (base unit) (UK): £150/$297
Sony PSP (core) (US): $199

*This figure comes from the BBC, but it seems awfully high. It may be the average income of a homeowner in the UK. Ave. income for all adults may well be lower.

£549?
No thanks.

You'd have to be either rich or stupid to pay that.

I'll just stick with my Xbox 360, and perhaps get a Wii next year. That's pretty funny that a Premium 360 and Wii are less expensive. I guess it's because Sony are taking a gamble with their Blu Ray technology.

To be fair, I seriously doubt the £549.99 price point is accurate on a wider scale. It wouldn't surprise me if Littlewoods, a catalogue shop which traditionally sells things at a higher price than the rest of british retail does and then allows poorer families to pay back an amount a week over a fixed period of time.

As for what Wintermute said, he is right to be unconvinced.The way Britain's jobs are split at the moment is that Londoners and those in the southeast of England earn more (far more) than those in the rest of the country. I think if you seperate the UK between London-SouthEast and the rest of the UK you get London £40,000 ($79,100) and the rest of the UK £24,000 ($47,500).

It's like that in the States, too.

The average income for the Northwest is vastly suprerior to the Southeast, but prices are balanced. It costs much more to live in California than Georgia. Trust me, I lived in both states.

SRS (my dad's company) gave him a raise just for being relocated to the Westcoast because of the difference in the cost of living.