soapbox

There has been a lot of anticipation lately about Sony’s PlayStation 3, scheduled to be released in November after the company postponed the launch in March due to delays in finalizing its next-generation disk technology. But, now it seems that Sony has yet to begin manufacturing its new game console, less than three months before it is slated to go on sale, and thus may have problems getting anything on the shelves in time for the holiday sales season.
Sony says is still gearing up to ship approximately 4 million consoles worldwide by the end of the calendar year, with 2 million units available by launch day. Although that is encouraging news, Sony is faced with a large logistical challenge to avoid the hardware shortages which plagued last year’s Xbox 360 launch for Microsoft. Granted Sony doesn’t have the inherent disadvantage of, well, being Microsoft, but it sounds like they’ve still managed to miss a good opportunity to grab a large chunk of sales and some marketshare.