Digital Journal — It’s less than three months before Sony is scheduled to release its PlayStation 3, but Sony’s president and CEO admits the company hasn’t even started making the consoles yet.
Kaz Hirai, the man in charge of Sony Computer Entertainment America, admitted to gaming publication GameSpot that the PlayStation 3 production lines have yet to be turned on.
“We haven’t started manufacturing yet,” he said. “Some of our ops guys were actually just in China, and also in Japan just reviewing the lines and everything else. But they are, again, preparing as we speak to get the manufacturing going,” Hirai stated.
In November, Sony says it will launch its next-gen video game console, the PS3, in three continents. Rumours of hold-ups have long circulated, with https://www.digitaljournal.com/news/?articleID=4811 target=_blank>fears of production being costly and complicated, and anticipated problems with the built-in Blu-ray disc drive.
“We’ve not announced and we haven’t set really a specific date to say, ‘As of this day we’re going to start manufacturing’,” Hirai told GameSpot.
Because of short timescale for mass production, Hirai says retail shortages of the PlayStation 3 are inevitable (one not need look very far back to remember Microsoft’s Xbox 360 shortage last November).
“Even if you do the simple math you’re talking about less than 700,000 units per territory, per major territory, between launch and the end of the year,” he said. “So even if there was some fluctuation — you give Japan more, you give the US more, what have you — you’re going to end up with some shortages. I think it’s going to be very much of a challenge to be able to meet every single unit demand that’s out there in the market. That’s just a logistical impossibility.”
Despite the tight timeline between now and November, Hirai says he is confident the company will still have its two million promised units for launch date. He says the company will also be able to ship one million consoles per month after that to reach six million units by March 2007.
“Everything’s pretty much on track,” Hirai told GameSpot. “We’re internally really getting geared up to go to market with this beautiful console in three months’ time, and at this point in time all signs are good to go.”
Of course everything is on track. Does anyone really expect Sony’s president to admit he can’t sleep at night because all he can think of are the giant pain-in-the-ass problems that don’t seem to be going away? No way — it would fuel the fire for Xbox 360 and the https://www.digitaljournal.com/news/?articleID=4837 target=_blank>upcoming Wii console from Nintendo.
Plus, market analyst firm Yankee Group recently released “a study” http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=18973 target=_blank> that predicted the PS3 will still be victorious over Xbox 360 and Wii. Despite the fact that nobody has even seen the PS3 yet, Yankee Group seems to be quite sure it will be market leader by 2011, with 30 million units (or 44 per cent of the market) sold worldwide. Microsoft will come in second with 40 per cent market share (the company has already sold a reported five million units) while Nintendo will capture only 16 per cent.
But Sony shouldn’t get cocky just because one firm thinks it can see into the future. More importantly than the PS3, we should be trying to get our hands on Yankee Group’s crystal ball.
