PSP to Miss EU Launch Date

GamesIndustry.biz has the news that just one day after announcing the U.S. launch date for the PSP, the European launch of the PSP may not happen until after the first quarter. From the article: "Speaking with the news service, Sony's Kenichi Fukunaga admitted that the firm cannot manufacture enough of the devices to satisfy demand in all three major markets - which has pushed the schedule for the European launch back."

Comments

Re:Not Enough Units...

[Leroy_Brown242]

UMD?
Unloader of Mass Destruction?!?!?!
OMFG!!

Sony = Terrorism!

I'm sorry, I let the media take over my body for a moment. I'm okay now.

Re:No suprise

[pikakilla]

Analysts. Before the launch in japan and before the launch price announcement in the US, everyone was placing the price of the PSP at around 300-400 dollars due to the manufacturing process (do a quick search on google), some were even placing the price as high as 500 assuming that sony wanted to offset the manufacturing costs.

Supposedly, the only reason that the price is so low is because of the DS and its low cost. Granted, SCE president says that the costs of the unit wont come down to profitability range (costs below 250) until march (optimistic estimate), but Sony had to lower their price to its current point because of the below expected price of the DS (Industry analysits were expecting a 200 dollar price for the DS)

Personally, i believe that the DS is just a sideshow for nintendo before the GBA2 (nintendo even calls the DS a "third tier"). I think it was just created to keep the nintendo folks on nintendos side and to keep sony on its toes. If Sony got a firm hold on the handheld market before nintendo could release any kind of compedetor, nintendo would be truly sol.

Re:No suprise

[pikakilla]

http://www.themis-group.com/uploads/Mobile%20Platf orm%20Wars%20-%20TR04.pdf

Read the psp price information area.

400 dollars as a launch price was floated around for a while. Knowing that consoles lose money at launch, i can reasonably deduct that the price of the console is 500 dollars to produce. Now, to give sony credit i will assume that the manufacturing price dropped recently in lieu of their price drop, so roughly 400 dollars.

Sony is not going to say "It costs us xxx to manufacture this product and we are selling it for yyy at a loss of zzz" because that doesnt look good to investors. You have to infer what the launch price is and deduce from there. I could be off by 50 or 100 (i dobut it though), but the fact is that they are losing a lot of money on the psp.

The Sony PSP has at least 2 big design flaws

[doc modulo]

Public Service Announcement:

1. When you hold your PSP tightly in your hands in a certain way, the game disc will shoot out of the PSP, sucks if you happened to be on a balcony, expensive game GONE!

2. The button with the square on it doesn't work properly, the underside/inside part of the button bumps against the glass of the screen so it won't press down completely. Games cannot be played properly on a PSP.

The president of Sony said basically: "People should just ignore these flaws because the PSP just looks so cool."

Smart people who are able to make up their own minds despite propaganda (some /. readers), will buy a Nintendo DS (2D + 3D) or Gameboy advance SP (2D) if they want portable gaming.