SCEA plans moves on Latin America

SCEA sales boss Ian Jackson said at the BMO Capital Markets Interactive Entertainment Conference yesterday that Latin America is a key target for PlayStation 2, and that the company is planning what sounds like a massive, three phase roll-out over the Continent.

“The significance of the Latin America market is huge,” said Jackson. “Obviously from a population standpoint I don’t think it’s a big secret that this is a huge opportunity. We will put a number of resources in place to cater to that market.

“Obviously just based on the sheer size of [Latin America], the number of countries there and the size of the population, long-term it has a very good opportunity to be bigger for SCEA than the Canadian market was.”

Jackson detailed how Sony's planning to expand over the vast landmass.

“We’re now launching there," he said. "There are countries in Phase 1 Latin America that we’re aggressively gong after, and they include Chile Argentina, Columbia, and Peru.”

Phase two of Sony’s push into Latin America is scheduled to begin this month, with the console being distributed to Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama and Venezuela.

Phase three targets are Uruguay, Paraguay and of course Brazil.

“We’ve identified that the Brazilian market as probably the biggest market opportunity for us, and that will be the third part of our launch which will take place over Spring 2009.”

Plenty more on Edge.