Well, here's some rather interesting news from the Sony camp. Sony has originally planned on a November 17 global launch for the PlayStation 3, but those plans have been completely hosed. It is now reported that Sony will delay the launch of the PS3 in Europe until March of 2007. To make matters even worse, Sony is only going to make available 500,000 total units split between the United States (400,000) on November 17 and Japan (100,000) on November 11.

"We decided to focus on the Japanese and U.S. markets. I am so sorry not to be able to answer to all the expectations," said Sony CEO Ken Kutaragi. Problems with manufacturing blue laser diodes are putting a serious strain on PS3 production and are part of the reason for the delay and low launch numbers. Kutaragi went on to say “We've been working hard to try to tackle the problem, but we see the delay is inevitable."

Mass production of Sony's Cell processor isn't even expected to start until the end of this month according to Kutaragi. And as a result of this production snag, Sony has revised its shipping estimates from 4 million units at the end of 2006 to just 2 million. Bottom line: if you thought you were going to have trouble getting a PS3 this year, your chances just got much worse.