Sony drastically cuts PS3 launch allocation

Mark Raby

September 6, 2006 12:21



Tokyo (Japan) - Problems with the production of Blu-ray's blue laser diode forced Sony to cut the launch availability of its next generation video game console Playstation 3 from 2 million to 500,000 units worldwide, according to report published by AP today.

In spite of the production problems, Sony is sticking to the 17 November launch in the U.S., as well as 11 November in Japan. However, the severe shortage has caused Sony to push back the release date in Europe from 17 November to March of 2007. In the U.S., the amount of PS3 units available at launch will be a mere 400,000. Japan will get the remaining 100,000.


Rumors have been floating around for months that there were problematic production issues for the PS3, but Sony had flatly denied these allegations, up until last month. However, because of the shortage of Blu-ray components, the company had to reduce on their original production forecast.

Sony is now predicting 2 million units to be released by the end of the year. Originally, the firm had planned to ship 4 million units by 31 Dec. Sony believes it will able to catch up by March of next year and still meet the 6 million unit mark worldwide by then.

The final shipment of the US Consoles on the 22nd is 1,098,200. (20% of those being core systems)

- 400K at launch
- US gets 80% of output
- 100K weekly shipment to the US until Xmas.
- All units airfreighted.
- Shipping weight of 7 kg(15 pounds per box)
- Sony Shiroichi facility has a capacity of 1 million diodes/month, but the yield is running much lower than expected. Production ramp up depends on yield improvement.

If the capacity is 1 million diodes/month but Nichia's official yield is 30%, then Sony Shiroichi's current monthly output is 300K diodes/month(Sony uses a licensed Nichia process).

So the monthly PSX3 output is capped to 300K units/month pending diode yield improvement.

Based on SCEI nunbers, the maximum that could be delivered to the US before Xmas is 700K this year.(400K launch units + 3 weeks of additional shipping). Even this is optimistic.

At last, SONY's marketing machine is moving forward and the first act is this 3 minutes and 20 seconds short (5 more to come). The object of this film is to cover the "Real-time" aspect of the console, in fact it is more about the benefits of a non-scripted AI.

Word in the press room is that HDMI support for the lower-priced console is worldwide.

The price of humiliation

What might have been a day of triumph at the Tokyo Game Show saw yet another heavy blow for Sony when the troubled electronics giant said it would be slashing the Japanese launch price of the Playstation3 by around 20 per cent to yen 50,000 (£250).

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The last-minute price drop is thought to be a response to the yen 25,000 launch price of Nintendo’s Wii – a simple, yet highly innovative games console unveiled last week and hotly tipped by games industry analysts as the likely victor in the next round of video games console wars.

Sony’s extraordinary decision suggests a plunge in confidence for a company that has dominated the past two generations of games machines.

Sony, humiliated by the recent recalls of laptop batteries and multiple delays with the PS3 launch itself, has not only staked its technological reputation on the PS3, but its reputation as an astute judge of the entertainment industry.

The success of iPod has badly tarnished Sony on the personal audio side, and the company has invested too heavily in the PS3 to allow a rival to steal its thunder in video games.

The decision to slash prices may make the machine itself a shade more attractive to the pre-Christmas market, but a greater concern raised at the Tokyo Game Show was the lack of any obvious "killer applications" – games so good that they will sell the machine itself, and which Nintendo appears to have in abundance.