The PS3 is launching in Europe this week, to little fanfare. A quick glimpse online will show that pre-orders for PS3 in the EU aren’t going as planned for Sony. It’s a couple days before launch, and retailers still have more consoles in stock than pre-orders. Doesn’t bode well for Sony.

Not to mention the fact that the PS3 is being outsold by the GBA in North America (according the February NPD sales numbers). Sony needs to step up their game. I don’t think Home is enough to boost sales of the console.

Even Sony’s head honcho, Howard Stringer, isn’t completely convinced the PS3 is gonna make it. In an interview with SmartHouse, he said:

And when asked about the popularity of Nintendo’s Wii vs. PS3 , Stringer said, “Wii is a wonderful device, but has a different target audience. If we fail, it is because we positioned PS3 as the Mercedes of the video game field. PS3 is after a different audience and it can be whatever it wants — a home server, game device, even a computer.”

Ummm… that’s not very convincing. You have Phil Harrison saying the PS3 is going to dominate the market, etc. etc. Then you have Stringer saying “If we fail…”. There’s some confidence for you. Not saying “If we aren’t number 1″, the man is preparing people for failure. Either he chose his words very poorly, or he sees the writing on the wall.

We’ll see how things go in the rest of the world later this week.