Sony will delay the launch of the PlayStation 3 by half a year until November, a report said on Wednesday, boosting Microsoft’s efforts to win a bigger share of the multibillion-dollar video game industry.
The next-generation home video game console is one of Sony’s core products and its success against Microsoft’s already-launched Xbox 360 is considered vital to its revival after a profit slump.
Sony decided to delay the launch from early 2006 because the copy protection technology for the DVD player has not yet been finalised, the Nihon Keizai business daily reported, without citing its sources.
Sony is using the next generation Blu-ray Disc technology — which is expected to have a greater storage capacity than rival format HD DVD — in the PlayStation 3 in the aim of making it a home entertainment centre.
A company spokesperson refused to comment on the report but said a press conference was scheduled for later in the day on the PlayStation.
Sony shares fell ¥90 or 1,62% to ¥5 480 in morning trade as speculation grew that the PlayStation 3 (PS3) launch will be delayed.
“Considering production schedules at the Taiwanese makers to whom Sony is outsourcing production, an October-November launch now appears very likely,” said Goldman Sachs analyst Yuji Fujimori.
“More important than the timing of the launch is what impact the PS3 will have when it debuts, which depends on the game line-up and pricing,” he wrote in a note to clients.
Sony has long dominated the home video-game market and in November the group said its shipments of the PlayStation 2 console had topped 100-million since March 2000, including 22,2-million in Asia alone.
Microsoft aims to sell 5,5-million Xbox 360 consoles by July.
“A delayed PS3 launch would provide needed room for Microsoft to consolidate its early lead in fifth generation game consoles,” Merrill Lynch analyst Joe Osha wrote in a report last month.
“This would be particularly true if Sony does not launch in North America and Europe until late 2006 or spring 2007, giving Microsoft a key second holiday season to sell game consoles and software,” he added.
When Microsoft brought the first Xbox game console here in 2002 it was nearly two years behind Sony’s PlayStation 2 and it has trailed ever since. The Xbox division has never made an annual profit.
This time Microsoft made sure it had a jump on its arch-rival by putting the Xbox 360 on the shelves in the United States in November and the following month in Sony’s home market.
Even so, Japan’s notoriously finicky video game players appear unconvinced by the latest Xbox, the first version of which failed to win over many Japanese consumers in part due to a lack of games that appealed to local tastes.
The new Xbox 360 has had more success in the United States, selling out within hours at some outlets and online retailers, although sceptics said this was partly because Microsoft had restricted sales to win favourable publicity.
Sony also faces a challenge from Nintendo, which aims to start selling its next-generation video game console, named Revolution, later this year.
Sony, which is in the midst of a painful restructuring, posted a record profit for the three months to December in a sign of a possible turnaround.
Amid criticism that the Walkman inventor has been slow to catch on to new concepts such as Apple’s iPod phenomenon, Sony last year put in the driver’s seat Howard Stringer, a Welsh-born former television journalist.
Stringer, Sony’s first foreign boss, in September announced a major overhaul including 10 000 job cuts by March 2008. – AFP