The headline is a bit misleading. It suggests Sony has confirmed March 2007 as the European launch date, which is not the case at all. The comment from Sony has absolutely nothing to do with Europe, so why you're simply mentioning a previous, unconfirmed report of your own in amongst this report is not clear.

"It would appear that Sony Computer Entertainment has briefed partners in all territories as to its launch plans in the last week, resulting no doubt in the series of leaks cropping up on-line. Our information comes from SCEE documentation leaked last week and independently corroborated by two publishing sources, a handful of developers and a leading pan-European retailer. The brief issued by Sony was, seemingly, too tempting a news piece not to leak, almost as soon as it was released."

Certainly the news relates little explicitly to europe. However the inference is that Sony will not attempt a worldwide release (as suggested by sony previously pushing a "spring" launch for the us), other sources (most notably Nvidia which hasn't recieved any royalties for the RSX graphic chips used in the ps3 - suggesting production hasn't actually started yet and won't until after april the end of the fiscal year) also suggest that the ps3 isn't ready for release anytime soon. Given the issues with worldwide release - it appears sony is concentrating on getting the ps3 out before national holidays in both japan and thanksgiving in the states (usa today reports that most analysts support this view. it also seems to be a given consensus amongst gaming sites - although eurogamer note that there is a conflicting message from publishing companies - this appears to be towing sony's official line, which, as reported by spong, looks like its changing to acknowledge a little problem.). Given that the u.k. suffered set back after set back with respect to the psp launch and the relative unimportance of europe compared to sony's key demographics of japan and america, is it not unreasonable to expect a march 2007 release?

Anyway, as with many things reported at spong, this is all speculation, opinion and rumour. This doesn't detract from your valid point that the banner implies an assumption that march 2007 is the "official" launch date, (although I would be willing to take a hefty bet that the launch will be towards the late end of march) .

Just a small thing though -

Config wrote

I'd like to set the record straight here. SPOnG isn't solely or even primarily a news site. It's a videogame information archive.

Hope I don't sound like too much of an arse.

as a UK sky digital subscriber i received a newsletter that included the news:
"The people at Sony have been busy fitting a Blu-ray player into the next generation of its PlayStation games console, the PS3, which is scheduled to launch in the UK in Autumn 2006. The device will play back games, which Sony have currently stated will look their best in High Definition, whilst also enabling users to watch the latest Hollywood movies on Blu-ray disc in glorious HD."

Since when has any Murdoch owned organisation been considered wholly trustworthy for news?

You have to remember though that sky is currently trying (not very hard at the moment, but it looks to increase in promotion) to push its own High Def Sky box - products which push high def, thus allowing sky to push its own products will be given news.

I'm really suprized by the wording though, "The people at Sony..." sounds really quite cute and not at all akin to an Evil Organisation(tm) trying to get us to buy their products. Slick marketing though.

I'll go along with all this. Bottom line is no one knows the definitive release date, not even Sony I suspect. I'm betting on a spring 2007 Uk release date.