Sony to Cut PlayStation 3 U.S. Allocation to 200 Thousand – Analyst

by Anton Shilov
11/15/2006 | 04:00 AM

An analyst believes that Sony Computer Entertainment America will further cut the allocation of the PlayStation 3 (PS3) game consoles in the <%BANNER[article]%>USA, which will leave software designers without significant additional revenues from PS3 game sales and gamers without the anticipated device.

“We expect Sony to deliver 150-200K units to stores in the United States for the launch; consumers without pre-orders may find it difficult to locate an available system. We estimate sales of approximately 750K PS3s domestically by year-end. We expect a more robust launch from Nintendo, with at least 1.2 million units sold in the U.S. and up to four million units shipped worldwide by year-end,” said Colin Sebastian, an analyst with Lazard Capital Markets, reports Gamasutra web-site.

The analyst said that due to the limited initial installed base of the platforms, the financial impact of the new consoles’ launch over the holiday period will be more significant for hardware manufacturers and video game retailers rather than for software publishers.

“We expect less than 15% of software sales to come from the PS3 and Wii this holiday; the more numerous Xbox 360, PS2 and handheld platforms (DS and PSP) remain key drivers of growth,” Mr. Sebastian said.

If the data by the analyst is correct and Sony will deliver only about 200 thousand of the PlayStation 3 consoles, this would be another blow for the company, who already blamed production issues with the Blu-ray lasers for reducing the amount of the game machines available at launch and cut the initial allocation by more than 10% even in its domestic market.

Sony Computer Entertainment America will start sales of the next-generation PlayStation 3 game console on November 17. Back in September SCEA said that only 400 thousand of units will be available at launch in the USA and 100 thousand would be shipped to Japan. According to reports, since then the company has further cut allocation for its domestic market to 88 400 units.

Meanwhile, DigiTimes web-site cites Sony Computer Entertainment Hong Kong as saying that there will be only 500 PlayStation 3) game consoles available for sale in Taiwan during the product’s launch on November 17.