Kaz Hirai: PS3 Production Not Started Yet

Around 80 days to go and still Sony has yet to kick off production of the PlayStation 3.

Are there still people who think it will be anything but difficult to find a PlayStation 3 this Christmas? Even these stalwarts would be hard-pressed to hide their disappointment after hearing the news that with around 80 days to go until the PlayStation 3 is due to make its global debut in Japan, Sony has yet to make a single console.

Kaz Hirai at E3 2006

"We haven't started manufacturing yet," Sony's American boss, Kai Hirai, said in an interview with GameSpot. "Some of our [operations] 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.'"

Sony said at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in May that it would have 2 million PlayStation 3s ready for the "launch window" of the console, another 2 million by the end of the year, and a further 2 million by the end of March. Is that still safe? Hirai's comments to GameSpot suggest otherwise.

"I think that we've always talked about shipping 2 million units worldwide within the calendar year," Hirai told GameSpot. He added that Sony hasn't made any decisions yet on how the pool would be divvied up between Japan, Europe and the US.

"Since we're going with three territories, we haven't really come up with an allocation just yet," Hirai said in the interview. "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."

Though the implication is that there will only be 2 million ready this year, instead of the 4 million planned, a Sony spokesperson said that the company is on track to have 4 million consoles in stores worldwide by New Year's Eve.

Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo Games