Sony’s CEO Howard Stringer and President Kaz Hirai were on hand to present customers with their new PS3 consoles at the SonyStyle store in Manhattan as thousands of US citizens braved cold winter conditions to pick up their machines.

Many stores opened at midnight to celebrate the launch, despite the stock shortages that have seen anything between 100,000 and 400,000 machines, depending on which reports you believe, hit US retail.

Celebrities such as Ludacris, DJ D-Nice and modern day Lara Croft Karime Adibebe were also on hand to add a bit of glitz to Sony’s big US outing. On the other side of the country, SCEA vice president Jack Tretton put on a suitably stage-managed show for the machine’s arrival in San Francisco.

Despite some initial concern surrounding Sony’s online network, the PlayStation Network Platform, the service was up and running by the time the first consumers got home with their consoles. The free service allows for the set up of friends lists, user IDs and access to the PlayStation Store.

Already available for download are demos of titles such as Resistance: Fall of Man, Motorstorm, NBA 07 and Formula One Championship Edition. Two full titles, Cash Gun Chaos and Blast Factor, are also available for download at a cost of $7.99.

As was experienced after the Japanese launch, online auction sites are already alive with punters keen to make the most of the widely publicised stock problems.

See Also:
PS3 still up for grabs on eBay.co.uk
EBay bans PS3 imports
Famitsu reveals PS3 software tie ratio is just 0.98
Sony admits PS3 problems