When the suits say Easter, they mean Easter.
As many of you already know, the PS3 is said to arrive in Europe, the biggest videogaming market in the world, next year. After the furore over eBay sales of little printed receipts, you'd have thought Sony would know better to deprive people of the things they most desire - but oh no.
The haven of people like me has, for the past few years, been Lik-Sang, a "grey import" site which allows people to import their videogaming wares from abroad, usually Japan. I was one of the lucky ones who got a few 360 games (region free of course) for about £20. It won't be so for the PS3. Sony has explicitly banned all "grey importing" of Sony hardware into Europe. Europe only. Nowhere is it mentioned that you can't import into the US. Hell, you can send it to an island in the south pacific, but god forbid we in Europe get one!

"The law is clear; grey importing PS2, PSP or PS3 into the EU, without the express permission of SCE is illegal. Therefore, we will utilise the full scope of the law to put a stop to any retailers who chose to do this," a Sony rep said to GamesIndustry.biz. "Ultimately, we're trying to protect consumers from being sold hardware that does not conform to strict EU or UK consumer safety standards, due to voltage supply differences et cetera; is not - in PS3's case - backwards compatible with either PS1 or PS2 software; will not play European Blu-Ray movies or DVDs; and will not be covered by warranty."

Of course, they wouldn't say the real reason why they won't sell to us early - phat loots (to steal a WoW phrase). It's long been known that Europe is a provebial honeypot for publishers and console makers, and Sony is well aware. The delay is caused by a lack of hardware, but this, this is just greed.

Also to note is this sentance - "Will not play European Blu-Ray movies".
Who on earth will import a console to play Blu-Ray films? Frankly, who even cares about Blu-Ray here in Europe? The battleground is never over here anyway, it's constantly in the US, why should we be penalised for staying neutral? It's like nuking Switzerland to get to their banks. Be nice to us, than you can have our money.