Executives from both Microsoft and Nintendo are sitting somewhere with big smiles on thier faces. That is because Sony has recently anounced two bombshells regarding thier Playstation 3 console. First, we hear that the PS3 will not launch in Europe until March of 2007. This will leave Nintendo’s Wii system the only next-gen system in the territory for several months (XBox 360 has been out for some time in Europe). Second, we find out that Sony will not have as many consoles ready for thier Japan and US launches in November as they originally said. The US will now be getting 400,000 systems and Japan will be getting 100,000 at launch. This means the console will likely be a hard find around the holiday season. Both of the anouncments stem from the fact that Sony is not able to produce the blue lasers needed for the system’s Blu-Ray drive quickly enough.

Sony currently dominates the console market share with its Playstaion 2 (Xbox and Gamecube coming in a very distant 2nd and 3rd) but with an extremely high price tag ($600) and a seemingly poor launch it appears as though Sony may be setting themselves up to give up a few more peices of the pie.

Evorgleb: Sony will probably still win the console war in the next generation but they aren’t gonna run away with the win like they did before. Nintendo and Microsoft have solid gameplans. It’ll be interesting to see what happens. Me? I’ll buy whatever system has the best games.