Play Station early release begins online, via television

Sony’s next-generation gaming console, the PlayStation 3 (PS3), will begin advanced sales early in the morning today through the Internet shopping site CJ Mall.
Sony Entertainment Korea said yesterday that this is the first time the PS3 gaming unit will be available in Korea. Only 800 units will be sold online over eight days; 200 will be sold on TV home shopping next Tuesday at 11:40 p.m. The home shopping session next Tuesday will be simultaneously broadcast online.
The PS3 officially goes on sale offline on June 16. The model to be released in Korea is the same that was introduced in Europe last March, only it has an 80-GB hard disk drive, the largest memory capacity yet for any PS3 console. The console will be coded for DVDs according to regional code (Korea is 3 and the United States is 1), but Blu-ray discs will be coded the same as the United States and Japan, though different from Europe.
Kang Hee-won, a spokesman for Sony Entertainment Korea, said that the Sony Group plans to offer high-definition content such as movies for download sometime later this year. Users will also be able to store high-definition content through Internet connections. The retail price tag for the PS3 in Korea will be 518,000 won ($558).

By Wohn Dong-hee Staff Writer [wohn@joongang.co.kr]