Earlier this year, a news story surfaced from the Taiwan Commercial Times that the PS3 was already in production. According to the report, the expected production numbers for Sony,s next gen game console would be approximately 200,000 by the end of July. The story further stated that Sony was shooting for 2 million units by late October.
At the time of the report, Sony remained silent and did not dismiss the news as being false. However, SCEA CEO Kaz Hirai has suddenly revealed that the PS3 has not, in fact, been in production as first believed in remarks to GameSpot. Hirai strongly denied that the PS3 was in the production phase by saying, "We haven’t started manufacturing yet. Some of our ops guys were actually just in China, and also in Japan just reviewing the [production] lines and everything else. But they are, again, preparing as we speak to get the manufacturing going. 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."
In addition, Hirai also said that shortages for the PS3 are expected. "We’ve always talked about shipping 2 million units worldwide within the calendar year. Since we’re going with three territories, we haven’t really come up with an allocation just yet. But 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. 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."
The unexpected news of the PS3 not entering the production stage, as of yet, will mean Sony will have to plan carefully if they hope to fill the expected rush of new purchases at launch in November. In comparison, the Xbox 360 entered production with only 69 days until its launch and realized major shortages during its initial release. Some game industry watchers are speculating that the high price and apparent lack of furor over Sony,s next gen offering will hurt sales. With only three months remaining until the PS3,s debut, the gaming world will soon find out if consumers will experience a shortage of PS3,s or a possible glut.
