Almost Immediately
From Bloomberg.com, and this was faster than even I expected:Oct. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Sony Corp., which slashed its profit forecast yesterday, said it may not reach this year's shipment target for the PlayStation 3 game console because of a parts shortage in the Blu-ray high-definition disc drive.
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.''
Again, I added the bold emphasis. So this is the new message, apparently, since both Hirai and Tretton have mentioned this in the last few days.
I don't think they would even mention this if they were going to come anywhere close to shipping a million consoles in North America by the end of the calendar year. So I'm expecting, at a minimum, a 20% shortfall. Worst case? Probably 50%. If the real number is between 500,000-800,000 units, don't be surprised. And in terms of the worldwide number (goal: two million), I think they'll do well to hit 1.5 million.
Full Bloomberg story here.
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