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Playstation Planet |
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Sony Corp. will begin selling its PlayStation 2 video
game player next March, three months later than
originally planned, but the delay is unlikely to threaten
its dominance of the $6.3 billion a year video-game
industry, analysts said Monday.
The state-of-the art PlayStation 2 console will go on
sale in Japan on March 4, in other Asian countries next
summer, and in the United States and Europe next
autumn.
Sony had been expected to begin selling the enhanced
version of the world's top-selling video game player --
and biggest contributor to its bottom line -- by
December in Japan.
Sony Names Launch Date For PSX2
Sony Corp. will begin selling its PlayStation 2 video
game player next March, three months later than
originally planned, but the delay is unlikely to threaten
its dominance of the $6.3 billion a year video-game
industry, analysts said Monday.
The state-of-the art PlayStation 2 console will go on
sale in Japan on March 4, in other Asian countries next
summer, and in the United States and Europe next
autumn.
Sony had been expected to begin selling the enhanced
version of the world's top-selling video game player --
and biggest contributor to its bottom line -- by
December in Japan.
It will be priced at 39,800 yen ($368) in Japan, where a
staggering one million units will be shipped in the first
week, officials at Sony Computer Entertainment, a
Sony unit, told a news conference.
Industry sources say Sony had earlier told its parts and
chip makers that sales of PlayStation 2 would begin
within this year. Analysts have speculated that Sony's
lack of experience in turning out super-fast chips to be
used in the new console may have contributed to the
delay.
Sales of the current PlayStation accounted for around
40 percent of Sony's consolidated operating profit in
the past year to March.
Analysts don't expect the delay to have much impact
on Sony's forecasted net earnings of 110 billion yen for
the current business year ending on March 31 because
of the heavy volume of PlayStation 2 machines
expected to be shipped within March.
``Sony's planning to sell one million consoles in the
first two days of the launch and then at least another
500,000 in the next few weeks,'' said Universal
Securities analyst Motoharu Sone.
``They had forecast two million units for this business
year so its not going to mean that big a difference.''
Sega Enterprises Ltd. has beaten rivals Sony and
Nintendo Co Ltd. to the punch in releasing a more
powerful game player. Tokyo-based Sega has already
released its $199 Dreamcast machine, the first to
feature 128-bit computer chip technology and Internet
capability. Dreamcast enjoyed whopping first-day sales of near
$100 million when it hit the U.S. market last Thursday,
double the company's original estimate. Its success is seen as make or break for Sega after its
predecessor, the 1995 Sega Saturn, flopped badly.
Since then, the company has seen its U.S. market
share slide to one percent from 50 percent in the early
1990s. Kyoto-based Nintendo, the world's second-largest
video game player maker, plans to begin selling a
next-generation game console, the Dolphin, in time for
the 2000 Christmas shopping season. But even with a year's lead in the United States,
analysts expect Sega to be little more than an minor
irritant to rivals Sony and Nintendo. In the United States the current PlayStation has
around 60 to 70 percent of the market for larger video
game consoles, with most of the rest going to the
Nintendo 64 console, analysts said. In most other regions of the world, PlayStation
dominance is overwhelming. Many consumers are likely to be willing to wait for
PlayStation 2 because it will be the first ``backwards
compatible'' console allowing existing Sony games to be
played on it. It will also have Internet capability, superior graphics
and use digital video disc (DVD) technology that will
allow it to hold around five times the data of
Dreamcast. Monday, Sony's shares closed up 650 yen or 4.55
percent at 14,930. Details of the PlayStation 2 launch
were released after the close of trade. ($1-108 yen)
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