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PlayStation 3 turns five today in Europe

Charge your glasses.

The PlayStation 3 is five years old in Europe.

It launched in the UK on Friday, 23rd March 2007, alongside a long list of launch titles including Call of Duty 3, Formula One Championship Edition, Genji: Days of the Blade, MotorStorm, Resistance: Fall of Man, Virtua Fighter 5 and, of course, Ridge Racer 7.

Sony Computer Entertainment UK's infamous midnight launch saw it give the first 125 people in the London queue a free 46" Bravia HDTV with their console.

"High definition is very important to people," said then head of SCE UK Ray Maguire. "A lot of people have bought flat panel TVs and they want content to go on it and PlayStation 3 is one of the few places they can get that kind of experience."

Despite it costing £425, Sony shifted around 600,000 PS3s in its first two days on sale across Europe, generating an estimated €400m. 173,000 PS3 units were sold in the first 48 hours of launch in the UK.

In January 2010 Sony announced PS3 had sold three million units in the UK. In February 2011 UK sales hit four million. PS3 had sold 62 million units globally as of 30th September 2011.

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