Sony confident of hitting PS3 targets
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(InfoWorld) - Sony is confident it will hit shipment targets for its recently launched PlayStation 3 game console, its president said Thursday. Prior to theÂ launch of the PS3 in November, Sony said it would ship 2 million consoles this year in Japan and the U.S. and 6 million by the end of its financial year in March 2007. Those targets remain achievable and won't be changed, said Ryoji Chubachi, Sony president and chief executive officer of the electronics business, in a briefing with reporters at its Tokyo headquarters. "With the PS3 the bottleneck has been availability of blue lasers but now production of those has been launched in volume," he said. "We did take time preparing ourselves but as of today we have reached our target production rate. Based on projections for this year we will reach [the PS3 shipment targets]." The PlayStation 3 was launched in Japan on Nov. 11 and in North America, Hong Kong and Taiwan on Nov. 17. Around 81,639 PlayStation 3 consoles were sold over the launch weekend in Japan, according to market data from Media Create. Demand for the console vastly outstripped supply but sales have dropped each week since the launch due to scarcity, according to the figures. Media Create estimates 42,099 units were sold in the first full week of sales and then 32,622 units in the week from Nov. 20 to Nov. 27. For the following week, the latest for which data is available, sales were lower still at 31,436 units, the company estimated. The PlayStation 3 had been due to launch in Europe in November but the laser shortage meant Sony postponed the European launch until March 2007. That date remains unchanged, said Chubachi. The executive also said that Sony will keep looking at ways of reducing the manufacturing cost of the console so that it can turn a profit on the PS3 as quickly as possible. Traditionally, game console makers have sold their machines at cost or a loss and then relied on game software sales to make a profit. In the case of the PS3, production costs are high and losses run at between $240 and $305 per console sold, according to a parts breakdown by iSuppli Corp. One of the reasons the PS3 is relatively expensive is the Cell processor that sits at its heart.Â Developed by Sony, Toshiba, and IBM, the chip is one of the most powerful yet developed and last year Sony created a team to look at how to use the chip in applications other than gaming. Chubachi said the team remains focused on this task but he declined to detail when the Cell might find its way into a television or other consumer electronics product.
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Sony Corp. 6758.T said on Wednesday   that it now expects to ship 2 million units of its PlayStation   3 (PS3) video game console by the end of this year, half its   original target of 4 million units.
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SANTA MONICA, California  - Sony Corp. is likely  to cut its PlayStation 3 price again by year-end following this  week's $100 cut, a senior executive at Japanese game software  maker Capcom Co. Ltd. said.
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Japanese electronics maker Sony Corp. could miss its end-March target for the European launch of its new handheld game machine PlayStation Portable (PSP), a company source told Reuters on Friday.
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Square Enix president Yoichi Wada took Sony to task Friday, saying the future success of the PlayStation 3 console may be in doubt "if its marketing strategy is not straightened up."
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Sony Corp.  expects at least 380  new PlayStation 3 games to hit the market this business year  and says that should rev up demand for the console that has so  far lost out to Nintendo's  wildly popular Wii.
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Sony Corp. (6758.T) will launch its  PlayStation 3 with an 80-gigabyte (GB) hard disk drive on June  16 in South Korea for 518,000 won ($556), offering the upgraded  version of its latest game console for the first time ever, the  Japanese electronics conglomerate said.
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PlayStation 3 graphics chip will also be available for Sony digital consumer products.
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Sony Corp. chairman Howard Stringer yesterday promised to shift the struggling electronics giant from recovery to growth and to make the PlayStation 3 a profit driver despite its bungled rollout.
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Sony says it sees no need to change its target to ship 2 million units of its PlayStation 3 game console worldwide.
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Sony Corp  will launch a  cheaper model of its PlayStation 3 in the United States, hoping  to attract more buyers as it goes up against rival game  consoles from Microsoft and Nintendo this holiday.
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'Within our reach' to sell 6m by April 2007, prez states Sony's plan to ship 2m PlayStation 3 consoles worldwide by the end of the year and a further 4m PS3s by the end of March 2007 is still "within our reach", company President Ryoji Chubachi told reporters this week.â¦
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An analyst writes... It may take another four years for the Sony PlayStation 3's sales to catch up with those of Nintendo's Wii, a games market analyst has claimed.â¦
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Although it is poised to bring some competition to the mobile gaming world with the PlayStation Portable, Sony seems more intensely focused on its PlayStation console and the silicon for the next-generation PlayStation3.
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By MARK OSWALD Of the Journal  The technology behind the Sony PlayStation 3 is coming to Los Alamos -- and not just for video game fans.
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TOKYO -- The recent management changes in Sony Corp.'s video game division were needed to ensure the success of the new PlayStation 3 console, Sony President Ryoji Chubachi told a newspaper Friday.
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TOKYO  - Sony Corp.  will likely launch its new PlayStation Portable hand-held game console in North America and Europe in March, a top executive said on Wednesday.