Sony Delays PlayStation 3
Blu-ray forcing the machine into hiding until November.
by Patrick Klepek, 03/14/2006
225 of 241 users recommend this story.
Sony has been anything but talkative these past few months regarding their plans for PlayStation 3. No one except Sony seemed to anticipate they’d continue to meet their projected spring release date in any territory, even Japan.
Today, Sony officially conceded defeat to the recent flurry of rumors and speculation, with Japanese newspaper Nihon Keizai Shimbun reporting the machine has been pushed back until November.
There aren’t many details out right now, but Sony says issues over the finalization of copy protection technology related to their Blu-ray disc drive is the cause of the delay.
When asked for a comment, a Sony Computer Entertainment America spokesperson only went on record saying that SCEI has not issued any official statement itself yet.
As the news is coming out of Japan, that creates a worrisome scenario for America and Europe. There were already rumblings Sony wouldn’t be able to launch in all territories before the end of the year, but missing out on the Christmas season over here could prove a deadly blow to Sony’s next-generation plans.
Somewhere in Microsoft’s offices, Bill Gates just opened a bottle of champagne. With more details expected at tomorrow’s PlayStation conference and the Game Developers Conference just around the corner, it appears the flood gates (for good or ill) are about to be unleashed.
Meh. It’s not like I would be able to buy a PS3 this year anyway, so it doesn’t really matter to me. Just as long as this doesn’t destroy the system, at least.
It’s so cute to see them try so hard and spend so much money on this when we all know someone somewhere is still going to be able to crack it eventually.
Quite frankly, I’m no rush to get a PS3. First, I have a ton of PSX, PS2, and GCN games to play first. Two, I don’t know what games the PS3 will have. Lastly, I’ve heard rumors about the system costing over $500 and I don’t have that kind of money lying around.
Meh. I’ll buy it when it’s available, when it’s priced correctly, and when there are games that I want for it. All three of those things will align at a point, inevitably. Same with X360, Revolution, and PSP (which I haven’t bought yet). Presently, Revolution looks like it’ll be the <I>first</I> of the next-gen systems that will meet my criteria (total cost of all currently-available games I want for system > cost of system itself with neccesary accessories), but X360 may have caught up by the launch of NRev.
With this kind of announcement, I thought that Sony’s stock would drop like a stone. No, everything is quiet on the Eastern Front. SNE (Sony’s ticker code) was up $0.17 today on NYSE and down about 1% on Tokyo Stock Exchange. I guess the big boys (mutual funds/major shareholders) were expecting something like that for a while, so the news release was almost a non-event.
Mind you, in about a year from now, if Sony drastically loses its market share to Nintendo and MS because of the PS3 release delay; Howard Stringer might be tempted in experimenting with some obsolete Japanese rituals.
Is anyone here in a hurry to pick up one of these new consoles? Since I’m definitely not rushing to get anything, I’m not worried. I think Sony will end up fine anyway.
The NRev is the only one I’m going to immediately buy. As goofy as the controller looks, it’s really piqued my interest as something that’ll be <I>new</I>.
Sorry, SE. Normally that would work, but I need more than one game to buy a system. I think I heard somewhere that they decided to make it for the PS2 instead of the PSP anyway. I may be wrong though.
