The One-Two Knockout Punch for Sony?

Sony has been having some horribly bad luck of late; not that I mind since I feel that their arrogance and their significant non-contribution to the gaming market would make them deserve last place in a heartbeat. (They won PS1 because of sheer quantity and PS2 because of the DVD player and backwards compatibility.) Recently, Sony has been in dire straights when it came to the PR department. However, my waking moments today were spent at Joystiq reading their most recent two-part guffaw… and this could very well stymie what little faith people had for the console… thus making this metagame console war Microsoft’s and Nintendo’s to win:Sony trims their initial release of consoles back from 2 million to 500 thousand. Apparently starting their production of PS3s in September (you might recognise that as this month) was a bad idea, and due to a severe lack of blue laser diodes (which makes Blu-Ray possible, of course), they’re not going to be able to make their forecast. The 500k units will be distributed by sending 400k to North America and 100k to Japan. For reference, Microsoft had 400k in the US during their launch, but the game isn’t the same now as it was last year. Last year, the 360 was the only available “next-gen” console; this year, should Nintendo still be on track for November Q4, there’ll be two competitors for Sony. And since Microsoft hasn’t fared well in Japan so far, Nintendo (again, if they launch) will have a very strong hand indeed with PS3s so rare.If you think that’s bad, you haven’t heard the half of it:Sony has delayed the launch of the PS3 in Europe until March 2007. Yup, you heard it: March 2007. First off, this is a huge blow to Sony’s marketability in Europe being that it launches after the Christmas sales rush, but that just gives Microsoft an even longer lead time before the PS3 launches… and it gives Nintendo a several month advantage itself (again, pending September 14, when we find out Nintendo’s global plans for the Wii). So much for the global release; so much for the end of delays. Europe is likely to be pretty upset over this.Nintendo, the ball is in your court. I hope you’ve got your game face on. There’s eight days until we know everything; knock this one out of the park.