[pApA SmerF01]

From the front page...

Today Ken Katurangi, Sony Game Chief, announced at the Playstation business brief that the PS3 will launch worldwide in November this year, with one million units per month to be shipped.

The following statements were also made at the special briefing:

The PS3 will be 100% backwards compatible, and all legacy titles played on the system will be displayed at high-definition resolutions (ala Xbox 360).
All games will ship on Blu-Ray discs. This is to help combat piracy.
A hard drive will be required and the PS3 will ship with it out of the box. It will have a 60GB capacity, be completely upgradeable, and support the Linux OS.
The Playstation 3 online service (mysteriously it does not seem to have been directly referred to as “the HUB”) will feature lobby matching, voice chat and also “commerce features”. The basic version of the service will be free.
Final PS3 dev kits are shipping out to production houses in June. There are also 15 different companies making tools and middleware for the SDK.

I must admit, it is a surprise that sony would be attempting a worldwide launch....but one thing is eluding me....

1 million per month worldwide....split that 3-way between u.s. japan and europe, that makes roughly 300,000 per sector per month, which translates to 600,000 by the end of 2k6 per sector per month.

that's not very much for a holiday...considering they would be expecting high demand.

Also notice how they didn't touch on the price of the console. Now if the harddrive is included, how much will it cost?

What do you guys think? Is this subject to change? And if not, are they going to run into the same shortages as the 360? Are they giving 360 too much time to ship out orders? And finally, what now do you think the price will be with a 60GB hdd?