The launch of Sony's PlayStation 3 games console got off to a feeble start last night with officials, media and security outnumbering customers for most of the evening.

Even at the official launch event held at Myer's Pitt Street store in Sydney's CBD and attended by Sony's local managing director, Michael Ephraim, media and security outnumbered PS3 fans until at least 11:00pm.

Desperate producers unashamedly asked the crowd to fake excitement when the cameras were rolling, while a team from 2Day FM let out bogus cheers to convince their radio listeners that a launch extravaganza was underway.

Sony fans here in Europe turned out to be not so “true-blue” to their favorite brand, some of them starting to bash Sony for its “infatuation” and for the high price established in the PAL areas for the PS3.

Although they are receiving the PlayStation 3 six months later than the Americans or the Japanese, European gamers get a more expensive and less powerful console (with reduced backwards compatibility).

At the Paris opening, without cheers or applauses the first buyers are invited to step on the store-boat, and soon the first happy PS3 owners in France are interviewed by the crowd of journalists, who are more numerous. Only about 50 consoles were sold from the 1,000 available…

Not far away, on Champs Élysées, the FNAC store specially opened for the PS3 launch- just like other 12 stores of the group in the entire France- sees its PlayStation 3 consoles stalling on the shelves. Here, from the 1,000 consoles available, less than 300 found their owners…

Many British journalists were also sent 168 cans of lager by Microsoft PR's with a value of £146 – the same as the price difference between the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in the UK...Those cheeky reps!