There is much industry speculation going on that suggests that the Sony PlayStation 3 will not launch until late 2006 and early 2007.
There are rumors going around stating that the Sony PS3 will not make a Spring or E3 launch this year. The speculations are turning more towards the Summer 2006 launch for Japan, November 2006 release for North America and US, and March 2007 launch for Europe.
There is also speculation that a million units will be allocated to each territory. We already posted that news, that a million units per territory isn’t a rumor, but is plenty enough inventory for the Sony PlayStation 3 initial launch.
About a month ago, we were told by Sony that the PS3 was still “on-target for Spring 2006″, but they didn’t confirm whether or not the launch would actually be for Japan, or North America, or Europe. Our guess (and notice that I typed the word “guess”) is that Sony will launch in Sony-land first, which is Japan.
We were also told by Sony that the PS3 will be unveiled at E3 in Los Angeles this year. Well, if the launch is still scheduled for 2006, then by all means this would have to be realistic.
There are also people calling themselves “analysts” who are trying to do the roadmap on when the Sony PlayStation 3 will launch. Please keep in mind that anybody can be an “analyst”. And, analyst stories don’t have a very good track record on predicting the future. Some analysts stated that the Microsoft Xbox 360 would not launch in 2005, when in fact, the console did.
All these launch rumors, speculations, and roadmap predictions are happening because Sony has kept quiet. They were quiet at CES (Sony never promised any PS3 info at the Consumer Electronics Show in the first place), and they will probably keep quiet until E3.
Microsoft following the same course of “silence” prior to the Xbox 360 launch. They were so quiet, that many “analysts” predicted that Microsoft doesn’t have a video game console ready for the holidays 2005. Wow, they were sure wrong.
