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Speculation Begins Over Initial PS3 Shipments
by GamePro Staff | 08/24/2006 | 10:51:48 AM PST
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As the PlayStation 3 launch date approaches, some speculation about initial shipment volumes is inevitable.But the guesswork has gotten off to an early start thanks to a misstep by a PlayStation executive and an analyst report from Tokyo.
How many PS3s will be available for launch?
How many PS3s will be available for launch?
Kaz Hirai, head of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.'s (SCEI) U.S. unit, said in an interview last week that the company plans to ship two million of the consoles in the current calendar year. That's half of the four million consoles the company originally planned to ship. But SCEI said Thursday that Hirai misspoke and that the company's original plan remains in place.
It calls for two million consoles to be ready at launch, a further two million to ship before the end of the year, and an additional two million to ship in the January to March quarter of 2007. The PlayStation 3 is due to be launched in Japan on Nov. 11, and in North America, Europe and Australasia on Nov. 17.
A day earlier, Mitsubishi UFJ Securities Co. Ltd. downgraded Sony Corp. stock from a "2" to a "3" on its rating scale, citing expected low shipments of the console. The Japanese brokerage house said it expects total shipments from the launch until the end of March 2007 to be just 3 million units -- half of Sony's target.
The UFJ analyst, Masahiko Ishino, elaborated: "In the medium term this would mean that it would take longer for Sony to recover its huge investment in PS3 and thus we are downgrading the stock," Ishino said.
Mitsubishi UFJ Securities believes that supply problems for some electronics components used in the gaming machine will cause Sony to miss its target. The components in question were not identified.
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