Sony PS3 rare as hens' teeth in 2006

Stan Beer
Monday, 21 August 2006 20:07

Your IT - Home IT

Just 12 weeks out from its launch on November 17, Sony is yet to start churning out its much heralded PlayStation 3 console off production lines and has admitted that consumers may have a long wait to get their hands on one.

In an interview with games website Gamespot, Sony boss in the US, Kaz Hirai, said that about 2 million PS3 consoles are expected to ship by the end of 2006. With eager consumers in the US, Japan and Europe fighting over a meager 700,000 units in each market during the holiday rush, it's safe to say that the closest most will come to a PS3 console will be a store demo model.

This will keep Sony well behind Microsoft, which has already shipped about 10 million Xbox 360 consoles to date and will no doubt have plenty of stock on hand to ease the disappointment of consumers who can't get hold of a PS3.

However, Sony expects to to ship about a million consoles a month from the time the company hits the start button and expects to have 6 million consoles in the market by March 2007, according to the Gamespot report.

A recent report by research organization, Yankee Group, predicted that Sony will overtake Microsoft to sell 30 million PS3 consoles by 2011, compared 27 million Xbox 360 consoles.

A big factor in the buying decision of consumers is likely to be the inclusion of high definition Blu-ray video players in PS3. Xbox 360 currently ships with standard DVD players but Microsoft plans to release a rival HD DVD Xbox 360 compatible add-on high definition player for a cut price cost of US$200 or less.

Many gamers maintain that the inclusion of high definition video is of little consequence in their purchasing decision. That may be true of the hard core gamer set. However, many consumers use their games console as their primary video player. In such cases, the choice between Xbox 360 and PS3 becomes stark.

As the market is evenly divided between HD DVD and Blu-ray as the high definition platform of the future, consumers who already own an Xbox 360, which already has a DVD player, may well opt to buy the HD DVD add-on player.

However, those who do not own a new generation console may well decide that it makes more sense to buy a console that has a high definition player on board that can also play DVDs than the unwieldy combination of a console that has a standard DVD player that gives you the option of paying extra for an additional high definition player.

Gamers may not give two hoots about the high definition video capabilities of their console but if they happen to be 12 years old the rest of the family might.