Sony delay PS3 until November

[Serenity Painted Death]

Exclusivity.

In other words, even though there are fewer customers (lower installed base), in a new / early console lifecycle, you are competing against realtively few titles. If a console launches with 1-2 million units for example, over the first two months....and there are only 10 software titles on the market for those customers, you may actually sell more units of your game vs. 3 years later....when there are 30 million units, but also 500 titles on the market...

As for the news of the delay...how can anyone really be surprised by this? I also do not believe that a delay this long can solely be due to Blu-ray copy-protection issues.

Nobody is surprised by a "delay" from the original "Spring" projection. The shocking part is that it now seems they are in fact going to delay launching anywhere but Japan to 2007. An early fall Japan release followed by a Noverber-ish release in the West was the general line of thinking. This is just incomprehensibly diastrous if indeed this is Japan only 2006.

 

[ROG27]

I said it before and I will say it again...if delayed, a near simultaneous launch in NA and Japan in Autumn.

The region coding for BR is Japan and North America being in the same region. The only difference between the two consoles will be the boxes and the instruction manuals. Sony will stockpile 2.5 million PS3s for a late autumn launch for both territories. This is the only scenario that makes sense...especially since North American dev/pubs have been told to target their launch titles for a FALL release in North America.

Of course that timeline could slip too. Anything could happen...but so far this is the most viable scenario.

 

[dizzyd]

spring of 07 in US?

They'd be out of their minds to launch in the US in 2007 where competetion with 360 will probably be the tightest. IMO they cannot afford to miss the Christmas holiday season in the US. I believe that either they will go with a simultaneous November release in the US and Japan or release first in Japan in early Nov. followed closely by a US launch in the middle to end of Nov.

 

[Dr. Nick]

I said it before and I will say it again...if delayed, a near simultaneous launch in NA and Japan in Autumn.

The region coding for BR is Japan and North America being in the same region. The only difference between the two consoles will be the boxes and the instruction manuals. Sony will stockpile 2.5 million PS3s for a late autumn launch for both territories. This is the only scenario that makes sense.

That is what I and I think most people are thinking. Sony would not want to miss the holiday rush and allow Microsoft to have all of the 2006 next gen sales. I always thought a November launch made sense for the US anyway.

 

[leechan25]

Maybe A Good Thing

It may give Developers more time to finish their product without rushing. Most of the Xbox 360 launch games were not hits. Sony has a change to really come out the gate with some heavy hits. I guess we all have to wait to see what Sony developers are working on to see if it worth waiting. Their developers will by then would have had an extra year to finish content.

 

[mckmas8808]

To miss 2 christmas season in a row in NA while the xbox 360 is selling like hot cakes is not going to sit well with investors.

Nope sure won't. Sell, sell, sell.

 

[dukmahsik]

dang a whole year of 360 to itself, MS better take advantage of this. They better have 7-8 million consoles out by the time ps3 launches.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Exclusivity.

I'm not a gambling man so perhaps that's why I don't rate this as a fair reason. The chance of developing for a platform only to find you'll have another 6 months of paying wages without selling any product is a risk I'd consider worth taking.

As for the news of the delay...how can anyone really be surprised by this?

I don't the delay is surprising, but the magnitude. To go from "Spring '06" to "End of '06" without even passing through a Summer and Autumn set of postponements is pretty exceptional I think. *IF* Sony make a worldwide release, with substantial quantitites of hardware, they might be forgiven. If all the components were complete the beginning of this year they should be making the things now. Either there's been a disasterous screwup and some component isn't ready (like RSX) or it is all BluRay's fault. Copy protection sounds fairly lame as an excuse. Why can't they use a Firmware upgrade? Maybe it has to be hard coded to prevent hackers??

 

[Joe DeFuria]

Nobody is surprised by a "delay" from the original "Spring" projection. The shocking part is that it now seems they are in fact going to delay launching anywhere but Japan to 2007. An early fall Japan release followed by a Noverber-ish release in the West was the general line of thinking. This is just incomprehensibly diastrous if indeed this is Japan only 2006.

Well, I'm not terribly surprised. Certinaly, my "best guess" was exactly what you said the "general line of thinking" is. However, for that to be delayed a few months beyond that is not terribly surprising.

Again, I think people simply do not understand everything it takes to pull one of these launches off. Especially when you have bleeding edge technology (blu-ray / cell) to throw on top of everything else that comes with a launch. Having said that, if we do assume that blu-ray is in fact the real problem....let's see a show of hands for how many people now at least understand MS's decision to forego any next-gen storage format?

People in this thread have stated how "pissed off" devs would be fromthis delay....I just hope any of those devs are not the same ones who screamed for more storage capacity.

I think this is actually an opportunity to reflect back on the XBox360 launch and give MS props for how well they actually pulled the launch off. It was on-time, there were several decent games, relatively few hardware problems...just a bit shorter on supply than desired.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

People in this thread have stated how "pissed off" devs would be fromthis delay....I just hope any of those devs are not the same ones who screamed for more storage capacity.

To be fair, that depends on whether they knew Sony's launch plans or not. If they're in the known (and blushing every time Sony said 'Spring 06'!) then they're no worse off.

 

[RobertR1]

I said it before and I will say it again...if delayed, a near simultaneous launch in NA and Japan in Autumn.

The region coding for BR is Japan and North America being in the same region. The only difference between the two consoles will be the boxes and the instruction manuals. Sony will stockpile 2.5 million PS3s for a late autumn launch for both territories. This is the only scenario that makes sense...especially since North American dev/pubs have been told to target their launch titles for a FALL release in North America.

Of course that timeline could slip too. Anything could happen...but so far this is the most viable scenario.

Blu Ray does away with region codes so I don't see that being an issue, unless that changed again.........

 

[Dr. Nick]

dang a whole year of 360 to itself, MS better take advantage of this. They better have 7-8 million consoles out by the time ps3 launches.

I think Microsoft was always preparing for such a thing happening in the US. Having well polished titles going up against launch titles some of which will be on the Xbox 360 as well for the Christmas season kind of reeks of what Sony had on them in 2001.

 

[rabidrabbit]

Don't know, but it kinda makes sense if Sony indeed are delaying the launch to Nov 06 in Japan and possibly to spring 2007 in US and EU.

We're still recovering from the xbox360 launch, and it will dilute the PS3 launch were it launched this spring. Next autumn maybe the time is "fresh" again for a new next gen console.
I just don't think it's too good to launch two next gen consoles too close to one another. People get fed up with all the hyping of these consoles pretty quickly, and it's good to let the waters settle for a while before unleashing a new storm

I don't think it will hurt Sony that much even if the ps3 misses the '06 holiday season in the west. The PS2 is still going very strong, and it together with PSP should carry them well into late 2006 - early 2007.
Even if they did launch Autumn - November '06 in US, it would most probably be a launch with supply shortages, meaning they'd still might sell less than the xbox360 during the holiday period.
The xbox360 isn't the only competitor they have, they have themselves to compete too, and it might indeed be wise to consentrate the holiday sales on PS2 and PSP, both of which are overselling the xbox360 today.

Do you think this should be just a race for the holiday season? I don't.

 

[Carl B]

I think PSP and PS2 would carry Playstation (financially) for another year - and beyond - if they absolutely could not make Spring, but that's not really the problem. PS3's a loss-leader in it's present incarnation anyway. Rather, it would be ceding ground to the competetion in terms of future console positioning/profitability. And that's where it starts to gain in importance for Sony.

 

[Joe DeFuria]

I just don't think it's too good to launch two next gen consoles too close to one another. People get fed up with all the hyping of these consoles pretty quickly, and it's good to let the waters settle for a while before unleashing a new storm

Are you being serious, or sarcastic here?

 

[Dave Baumann]

Guess Bungie have some more time to work on Halo 3 then!

 

[RobertR1]

Another thing to throw out here. With Vista being launched in November, some people might allocate their budget to upgrading or getting a new PC for Vista vs. picking up a PS3.

 

[Gremmie]

Does anyone think there is a chance they will launch in the US first, since it seems to be the most crucial territory? I could see a US launch in September or October followed by a Japan launch. I have no idea what they'll do about Europe though. Does anyone else think this is possible?

 

[expletive]

Don't know, but it kinda makes sense if Sony indeed are delaying the launch to Nov 06 in Japan and possibly to spring 2007 in US and EU.

We're still recovering from the xbox360 launch, and it will dilute the PS3 launch were it launched this spring. Next autumn maybe the time is "fresh" again for a new next gen console.
I just don't think it's too good to launch two next gen consoles too close to one another. People get fed up with all the hyping of these consoles pretty quickly, and it's good to let the waters settle for a while before unleashing a new storm

No offense but this sounds like a total spin. A 6 month delay can only drive former PS2 fans into the waiting arms of Nintendo and MS. To say the market isnt ready for the PS3 becuase theyre overhyped is way off-base. Have you been reading THESE forums? The posters on this forum are generally very mature and even tempered and even they are starving for any morsel of PS3 information. PS3-Nation is rabid!

Blu-Ray has now turned into a huge gamble for Sony. They've now traded Blu-Ray for cost equality and a big time to market disparity.

I still think its(blu ray) biggest problem is not HD-DVD, but digital distribution. I'm nearly certain HD-DVD is just being propped up by MS so that Dig dist. becomes more and more viable. And don't forget about apple ether. It wont be long before theres a REAL video iPod and mac mini media center downloading full length movies from iTunes...

 

[ROG27]

Blu Ray does away with region codes so I don't see that being an issue, unless that changed again.........

No, it does not. There are 3 regions:

Region 1...North America, Japan, and Asia (not including China)

Region 2...Europe and Africa

Region 3...Russia and China ('pirate countries' as the consortium so aptly named them)

Not so ironically, I believe PS3 will come out in the numerical order of these regions.