Kutaragi: PS3 2006 Shipments Cut in Half, Launch Numbers Low

*clunk*

Aaaand that would be the other shoe dropping.

Forbes reports that PlayStation chief Ken Kutaragi has just announced that Sony will only ship 2 million units of the PlayStation 3 by the end of the calendar year, coming in juuuust shy of the 4 million they announced at E3:

But as the technical problem with the Blu-ray system weighs on the launch of mass production of the PS3, Kutaragi said he now expects the combined shipments of PS3 consoles for the Japanese and US markets to come in at 'slightly above 2.0 mln units' between November and December.

The company had initially planned to ship 4.0 mln consoles globally until the end of 2006.

It was going to be really hard to get a PlayStation 3, already. Now that there's only going to be one million units to go around in each territory, it just went from "really hard" to "damn near impossible."

UPDATE: As if tonight couldn't get any more jam-packed with insanity, an Associated Press article reveals launch-day numbers. While the US will get 400,000 machines at launch, Japan will only get 100,000. That's about two-thirds of what the Nintendo DS sells in any given week, there.

This is getting too crazy to handle.