blahMarch 15, 2006: 6:30 AM EST
TOKYO (Reuters) - Sony Corp. said Wednesday it would delay the release of its new PlayStation 3 video game console until early November because development of some of the technology was behind schedule.
The company, which currently dominates the game console market with a market share of about 70 percent, said it planned to launch the much-anticipated PlayStation 3 (PS3) almost simultaneously in Japan, North America and Europe in time for the key holiday season.
"When we initially announced our plans to launch this spring, we had expected the standardization work on all of the technologies to be completed by last August, but there were improvements that were decided on since then," said Ken Kutaragi, president of Sony's game division.
"We wanted to be sure to include all future technologies that are available now," he said at a business briefing for software developers as he apologized for not updating the industry sooner.
The PS3 launch date has been the subject of heavy speculation in the industry as expectations are high for the machine, which will have cutting-edge technology and is expected to enable users to play games and movies as well as download videos from the Internet.
As if the chaos that's going to erupt when people start swarming stores to find PS3's weren't bad enough with a spring release. Add the holiday season to this mess and I envision a few trampling deaths. I wonder if it'd be worthwhile to try to snag one of the suckers as they come out simply for resale purposes. The darn x-box 360's were going for something like twice retail on ebay. I wonder if it's first come, first serve when it comes to buying one or if there's some sort of lottery system. Oh well, if it weren't for wanting to resell the thing, I have no use for a PS3. I haven't even played all the games I have for the PS2.
