Sony PlayStation 3 EU launch delayed by Blu-ray

Stan Beer
Wednesday, 06 September 2006 17:44

Your IT - Home IT

The good news for US and Japanese gamers is that Sony PlayStation 3 will go on sale in the US as planned in November. The bad news for Europeans, Asians and Australians is that, because of Blu-ray manufacturing problems, they will have to wait until March 2007 before they can get their hands on a PS3.

According to Sony Computer Entertainment president Ken Kutaragi, mass production of the Blu-ray laser diode will be delayed by about a month, which will set back the assembly line of PS3 consoles.

As all PS3 watchers know, the Blu-ray high definition video player is a key feature and major selling point of the PS3, so Sony is anxious to get it right.

However, this particular delay is an important one because it causes Sony to miss the all important holiday shopping season in Europe, while Microsoft has promised to deliver an HD DVD plug-in player for the rival Xbox 360 console, which has already been on the market for most of 2006.

Alarm bells were already ringing near the end of August when it was revealed that less than three months from its scheduled Japan and US launch dates in Mid-November, Sony had still not pushed the start button on its production lines.

Sony had planned to ship 4 million PS3 consoles to its key markets of US, Japan and Europe by the end of 2006. That number has now been pared back to 2 million and Sony now promises that from the start of 2007, production will start in earnest and 6 million consoles will be delivered by th end of March.

The culprit for the delay is the integrated Blu-ray player in PS3. This is not only bad news for Sony from the PS3 point of view but also for its efforts to win the high definition video format war against HD DVD backed by Toshiba and Microsoft. The PS3 is considered to be a key driver in getting inexpensive Blu-ray players into the market place.

As far as gaming is concerned, it is beyond dispute that the PS3 Cell processor, developed by IBM and Toshiba, is by far the most advanced and powerful games processor that will be on the market when it is released in November.