European gamers rejoiced when Sony announced at E3 that the PlayStation3 would be released in all regions during the month of November, no long waiting after the Japanese and American releases as with the original PlayStation and PlayStation 2. Sadly time has shown that this claim was too good to be true for PAL gamers, and in Europe, Russia, the Middle East, Africa, and Australia they are going to have to wait until March ’07. The release dates in Japan and North America have not changed, which are November 11th and November 17th respectively.

“The revision of the launch date in the SCEE territories is caused by the delay in the mass production schedule of the blue laser diode within the Sony Group, thus affecting the timely procurement of key components to be utilised in PLAYSTATION 3.” (Taken from a statement from SCEE)

So it seems the delay has been caused by the manufacture of the Blu-Ray drives, which seem to be causing quite a lot of problems for Sony at the moment. This has not only meant a delay in the European release, but also a massive reduction in the amount of consoles available where it is launched. Sony predicted that there would be 2 million consoles available at launch, but now there will only be 500,000. That’s 100,000 in Japan and 400,000 in North America, far less than the farcical 360 release last year. Sony still expects to ship 6 million units globally with in the fiscal year ending 2007, though this seems unrealistic in my opinion. Hopefully the delay will mean there wont be a shortage when we finally do get a release in Europe.