PS3 shipments are a 'target', not guarantee

Well, you can't say we didn't tell you so. After broadly proclaiming a worldwide release of the PS3, we saw the European launch pushed out. After widely announcing the massive numbers of systems that would ship at launch, we saw the numbers halved. Now, in climbdown number three, a Sony exec is saying that the numbers bandied around as fact are, in fact, mere "targets".

Bloomberg has the details. Sony originally promised 1m PS3s at launch then a further 2m before the year was out. This was reduced to 500k at launch and another 1m before the end of the year. Now, Jack Tretton (one of Sony's PlayStation bigwigs) is quote as saying that:

"The honest answer is [that the shipment numbers are] more of a target", rather than a hard guarantee.

It seems that everybody but Sony expected problems with the machine this Christmas. Who really expected the firm to meet the generous numbers it had predicted - especially given the problems Microsoft faced this time last year in getting the 360 out to market?

Problems with the Blu-ray drive manufacturing are to blame for the shortages, as the drive begins to look more and more like the system's achilles heel rather than its match-winning advantage.

Have you got your PS3 order down? Give us the skinny in the forums.