Supposedly. http://www.forbes.com/technology/feeds/afx/2006/09/06/afx2995529.html Particularly interesting because Europe has always been 'SonyLand' where they strongly support the big S. Now they were chosen to get the shaft. Will they wait that extra time for the PS3? And what does this say about how smooth the Japanese/US launch will go? Regardless, I think most people expected Sony's 'launch units' numbers to be a little exaggerated. And I guess at least Europe will benefit by having most of the bugs/kinks worked out by the US and Japan. There are other rumors, however, that the estimates are only 400,000 units in US for launch and only 100,000 in Japan. That would be very bad news, I think, for Sony, if those numbers turned out to be true. Interesting to see how it all works out.
anyone buying a launch-day PS3 is just asking for problems actually, it's not a good idea to buy any console's first version launch-day hardware (the infamous Disk-Read Error for PS2, the Thompson drive debacle for xbox1, numerous heat and lockup problems for the xbox360)...but it's looking to be especially risky for the PS3
On the brightside, if you can get a hand on three or for before Xmas, then that's almost down payment for a new car once you unload them off eBay.
Well, the timing of this is certainly surprising (especially since I was asleep ), although I certainly am not that shocked by it. It was just funny since SCEE just started this huge PS3 advertising campaign...and then it gets delayed until March. I guess that tells you how well SCEJ communicates with the other divisions. It isn't good for Sony or Europe that they delayed the release there, but if there was any region that they could afford to delay it in, Europe would be it. The 360 has pretty much bombed there (if you could call it a bomb this early), and it isn't certain if Europe is as crazy about the Wii as say Japan. Still, 5-6 months is a long time, and not all the Europeans who were planning on getting a PS3 this year will be doing the same in March. Oh, and those weren't rumors AFAIK: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/09/06/business/AS_FIN_COM_Japan_Sony_PlayStation.php That's about the same numbers (actually a little less I think) than what the 360 launched at. Ugh...things are going to be absolutely crazy. I don't see how they can still meet 6M by March 07 though. More power to them if they can, but that seems pretty unlikely at this point (a little over 2M by end of 06 seems unlikely at this point too, unless they make a ~500K shipment during the last week of the year). Plus, if they could somehow hit 6M by March, why would they still not launch in Europe until then (3M each for US and Japan, instead of ~2M for each)? Yeah...that seems reasonable.
Man...if those numbers stick, that's very interesting. Particularly in Japan...having only 100,000 available at launch is not a good thing. And somehow I doubt that they will be pumping them out regularly after launch. It will be like the 360 shortage, if not worse. But this will be happening as the Wii tries to get going and as the 360's library gets considerably better. Maybe they should just delay the launch altogether? I don't know...maybe that wouldn't help things.
Is there a release date yet? Any info on what kind of connection the Wii is going to have? I highly doubt it will be HDMI and personally I hope it isn't because I'm running out of HDMI inputs.
what a suprise...looks like the ps3 will play the roll of the last piece of crack on earth in november... PS3 Launch Shipments Slashed by 75% http://ps3.ign.com/articles/730/730814p1.html UK, September 6, 2006 - Following news that Blu-Ray production difficulties have led Sony to delay the launch of its PS3 console from November this year to March 2007 in Europe, the company has revealed that the number of units hitting US and Japan at launch has been slashed by 75% from initial figures. It's currently expected that around 400,000 PlayStation 3s will be available for the console's US launch on November 17 while approximately 100,000 units will ship on the Japanese launch day of November 11. By way of comparison, the PS2's US launch saw around 500,000 units hitting shelves on day one (the figure having been revised from an expected 1 million units by Sony the previous month following supply shortages), with Japan recieving just shy of 1 million units. The one month production delay caused by Blu-Ray manufacturing has, according to Sony Computer Entertainment president Ken Kutaragi, resulted in a reduction of about 1 million units from the number originally envisaged for launch. Sony has previously stated it expected 2 million PlayStation 3's to ship during the console's launch window, and 4 million arriving by the end of 2006. While Sony is still sticking to its figure of 6 million PlayStation 3 shipments by March 2007, Daiwa Institute of Research analyst, Kazuharu Miura, has told Reuters, "We had forecast PS3 shipments of 5 million, instead of Sony's 6 million forecast. I think 4 million is a more realistic picture now."
As I said, I don't see how Sony could only get ~500K for launch (in mid-November), but then hit 2+M by the end of the year (month and a half after launch), and still get 6M by March. I have no idea how mass-production of these diodes will turn out, or how they work, but that just seems too optimistic. I guess if there's anyway that Sony can reach those numbers (going from producing hundreds of thousands of diodes a month to millions of them in ~30 days), then I guess it won't be too bad. Otherwise...well...you get the picture. Of course, Sony's told us Spring 2006, WW launch in November, and 2M at launch, so I don't know why they'd expect anyone to trust their estimates anymore. The price might affect things a little bit as well as smarter approaches by US retailers (not accepting preorders), but I expect things to be much worse for the PS3 than the 360. Especially since people in Japan actually want the PS3 (as opposed to the 360). Things here are going to be crazy, but I can't even imagine how it will be like over there. I don't really think it would help things that much, although I guess it depends on how quickly Sony can ramp up production of these things. Plus, I guess Sony is trying to have some sort of impact on the BR/HD-DVD war by getting the PS3 out in the US by the end of the year (even at those quantities, it would most likely be in far greater supply than other players...especially due to the lack of diodes). Here in the US, I don't think anyone has really started accepting preorders. They've been waiting until they could get firm shipment numbers from Sony (as well as Nintendo in regards to Wii preorders), trying to avoid the problems that occurred last year. Europe (and Australia I think) was accepting preorders this summer, and they even had preorder discs that came straight from Sony. There's supposed to be an event on the 14th of this month IIRC, and given that Nintendo doesn't really have any other chances to announce a release date, I think most are expecting them to announce it then (together with other details of course). Thinking back about it, Sony was really stupid to announce all this stuff so soon. IIRC, I was surprised to see them unveil the PS3 release date (the first one) along with the PS3 itself at E32K5, I was surprised to see them announce a WW launch earlier this year (PS Business meeting) as well as their launch estimates (2M at launch, and so on), and I was surprised to see them announce the price at E3 this year. Turns out that each announcement has led to a large amount of negativity (though the price announcement did that directly, and would have occurred anyway). They should have just kept those things secret and waited until a few months prior to launch (like now...hey, TGS is right around the corner), and then released all the necessary launch info (just like Nintendo and MS are doing). We still would have ended up with the same situation, but people wouldn't have been expecting to see the PS3 launching in Europe this year, or at those quantities (plus they'd have near final PS3 games, BR movies, and other software ready to counter the negatives). I hope they learned their lesson. Oh yeah, the Wii doesn’t use HDMI AFAIK. It doesn’t support HD (except for 480p if you want to call that HD), so I’m guessing it will have connections similar to past consoles.
I'm trying to figure out if this is really bad news, or just Sony's usual 'Uh-Oh! Shortages!" holiday hype to get pictures of that 'hot item for the holidays' blurb on CNN. Delaying Europe by 4 months may hint toward the former, though.
Forget that. I've been holding out for PS3, but I wouldn't touch the initial launch units even if I got the opportunity. Looks like my wait will be another 7-8 months. Evan
I'm not sure this is a real big deal in the long run. It just means that Sony won't shatter some temporary yet meaningless sales record, but I wouldn't bet against their PR making another one for them to boast. $500-600 is a lot of money and is more than X-Mas gift material, imo. If you want one, you'll buy one. Another 4 months isn't going to change that. Hopefully, their quality control will be a little better in the process.
Yeah, I don't think this is Sony trying to create hype. The PS3 would have been a hot item for the holidays regardless (even if they did hit their estimates). It might be hotter now, but the shortages would have been crazy in either case (especially with Europe taking ~30% of the shipments). I think people were accusing MS of doing that last year with the 360, but considering MS didn't really get to meet supply in the US until around March-April IIRC, I don't think that was their plan either (especially since it hasn't really helped much from the looks of things). I think the PS2 launch was similar too IIRC, although I'm not sure about that. Now that I think about it, I wonder if Sony will end up losing less money on the PS3 in its first ~6 months than they were expecting (guess that might be a slight positive, for them anyway). Instead of 2M/4M for launch/2006, they'll only have 500K/2M available (plus only 2 regions to worry about). I'm not sure how much that will matter though; it sounds like they already have most of the other PS3 components produced (3+M Cell chips, and that's probably the most difficult component to manufacturer besides the BR drive), so the actual costs to manufacture the parts might not really be less (plus whatever costs they were expecting from the BR diodes would go up). I'm not sure how much it costs to assemble the system, but I guess they might save a bit on that. Yep, this news by itself isn't really a big deal IMO. But if it ends up hampering the supply of PS3's for the next year or so, then that could be a big problem. If there is only 2-3M PS3s available in only 2 regions by March 07, 3rd parties might start making some adjustments. A regular PS3 exclusive like Devil May Cry 4 might become a multiplatform title; something else like maybe a Bioshock might end up being exclusive to the 360 (perhaps FIFA/PES is a better example). If they can still get 5M-6M by March, then yeah, this won't matter...in fact, in the end, I'd probably prefer Sony having ~3M each in the US and Japan by March than I would with say ~2M for each of the 3 regions (US and Japan are arguably more important). I've had class all day, so I've missed most of the backlash posted throughout the day from various internet sites. I don't really feel like reading them since some sites have more views regarding this news than there will be PS3s available in Japan this November. I'm just glad I made my decision to hold off on the PS3 back in May.
man just buy the extended warranty on your PS3 if you get the first shipment, if anything is wrong with it, exchange for a new one.
Now if WB, Paramount, and Universal can get some more big name titles out for the HD-DVD format by Christmas, it'll have a big edge in the format war over Blu-rry. King Kong on Nov. 14 is nice, but I want Batman Begins and The Matrix, damn it!
This is the U.S. we are talking about. Tickle me Elmo was like 300 bux at one point. PS2 was easily $1k around x-mas at lauch. People in this country buys into hype (ppl going to see Titanic for the 10th time, lingin up for 10 hours for the opening weekend of a IKEA) and will do rediculously dumb things because of it.
