Sony Says They May Not Hit PS3 Shipment Targets

Via 1up, a Bloomberg article exploring the possibility that Sony may not hit their shipment targets for the PS3. From the article: "Sony plans to ship two million PlayStation 3 players this year to the U.S. and Japan, and six million worldwide by March. The Tokyo-based company said yesterday annual profit would fall 35 percent to its lowest in five years on price cuts of the console in Japan and a recall of 9.6 million computer batteries. 'The honest answer is it's more of a target' for PlayStation 3 shipments, Jack Tretton, co-chairman of Sony Computer Entertainment America, said yesterday in an interview. 'Clearly we've had production issues.'"

Re:In another article...

[abigor]

I'm not really a gamer, but I've noticed that Zonk posts a lot of anti-PS3 stories. What's up with that? Is it wishful thinking on his part, or will the PS3 really crater?

I'll be the first to admit

[cybrthng]

The PS3 is going to sale in name alone.. i'm not going to play fangboy on any one side, but with recent light of events there are going to be a lot of upset kids this christmas if they're expecting a PS3 or a Wii and that may just help the 360 out.

PS3 luanch linup is a fantastic linup, but only 4 exclusives that won't be available on the 360 that i'm aware of. Wii has a fantastic linup but even if there are a million units the numbers shipped by christmas probably won't be enough to fill demand.

Another downside is after the 360 launch experience a majority of people buying these will only be buying them to resell on ebay - even if there is enough to fill demand people are going to do it because it worked so well for them last time.

So high prices, high demand, angry shoppers.. high cost across the board...

i'm not sure it will boost the 360 sales because of the microsoft stigma but i'm sure it will push sales to PC games, HD tv's, computers, laptops and mp3 players!

will be interesting.. Sucks to be Sony though.. i can't imagine how they messed up supply chain management considering they're king of most of what is in the ps3!

Re:Oh look 1UP

[Kichigai Mentat]

What? You mean the GP2X [wikipedia.org]? I mean, it's TOTALLY hacked [hackaday.com] these days, what with USB Host Mode, WiFi drivers, Qtopia, GPS, etc. Plus, did I mention it has a decent library of games [gp2x.org], and has good progress with emulation [gp2x.org] (at least, with the big consoles from the fourth generation/16-bit era). There's plenty of toys [gp2x.org] to go around, and at $169 [lik-sang.com], it's not too badly priced. Did I mention that it hooks up to a TV [lik-sang.com], uses SecureDigital cards, runs a Linux kernel, and has built-in media capabilities rivaling the PSP?

The only big flaw with the console is, and this is a highly controversial point that has sparked many a flamewar, the fact that it runs off of AA batteries instead of a rechargeable one.

The timing is predictable

[Morinaga]

This should come as a suprise for absolutely no one who is familiar with corporate business.

Sony's quarterly earnings release was at the end of last week (Oct. 12th, http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/info/SEMC/200610.h tml#block0 [sony.net]). The talking heads will not give any negitive outlook prior to an earnings release and the quarterly investor conference calls. Also, unless it's a slip-up corporate communications will not voice "lower than expected" earnings, growth, results or whatever unless it's at the end of the business week towards close of the market. This is a tried and true practice of letting bad news simmer over the weekend so it can be often offset with good news sometime next week. So, expect some sort of positive communications from Sony next week sometime.