TOKYO – 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 US$6.3 billion a year video-game industry, analysts said on Monday.
The state-of-the art PlayStation 2 console will go on sale in Japan on 4 March, in other Asian countries next summer, and in the United States and Europe next autumn.
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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 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 31 March 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.
On 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.
