New Report: PS3 delayed until August

The DigiTimes in Taiwan quotes Sony's manufacturers there as saying that Blu-ray problems will delay the PS3 launch until August.

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The DigiTimes has been reporting heavily on its hometown Taipei Game Show, and now they've got a scoop from Sony's Taiwanese contract manufacturers. The site says that these manufacturers have reported that the PS3 will be delayed until August because of problems with the specs and price of the Blu-ray high-definition DVD drive.

The hitch is copy protection -- the final standards for the new disc format have yet to be agreed upon. This meshes with what Sony Asia's managing director said a few days ago, that the company will wait until it's "completely prepared" to combat piracy before it launches the PS3.

Meanwhile, the new Blu-ray disc drives may be prohibitively expensive for some time -- Merrill Lynch cites them at $350 apiece, and puts the PS3's total manufacturing cost at $800. So even when Blu-ray copy protection is ready to go, a delay might be in order to wait for Blu-ray prices to drop a bit.

So, is this report credible? Though we've just started reading the DigiTimes this week, they've done a good job reporting from Taipei thus far. And this news seems to match up with everything else we've heard, both from a Sony spokeswoman who discussed Blu-ray problems and Sony Asia's boss on piracy.

As far as the August date, who knows; we've heard September this week too. Maybe nobody knows, because the real date hasn't been decided. But you can bet on one thing: it ain't lookin' good for Spring.

Source: PS3 Week