Sony Lowers Shipment Target for PlayStation2
January 29, 2001 (TOKYO) -- Sony Corp., in announcing its business results for the third quarter of fiscal 2000, shed some light on the present state of its video game business.
Sony had originally set a target of shipping 10 million units of the new PlayStation2 game machine worldwide during fiscal 2000. But the company has now revised that figure downward to 9 million units for the year, with shipments split evenly at 3 million units apiece to the markets of Japan, Europe and the United States.
Due to production problems, shipments during the third quarter stagnated at 2.88 million units (1.46 million units to the United States, 1 million units to Europe and 420,000 units to Japan). For the fourth quarter Sony expects to ship a total of 4.01 million units, including just 410,000 units in Japan, 1.54 million units in the United States. and 2 million units in Europe.
It is worth noting, however, that Sony released the PlayStation2 in Japan before its release in other markets, shipping a total of 1.41 million units last fiscal year (ended March 2000) in Japan. If that number is added to the new shipment target, then cumulative shipments through to the end of this fiscal year will exceed 10 million units.
Regarding Sony's plans for the PlayStation and PSone, the company still expects to ship 9 million units this fiscal year as originally planned.
Sony's downward revision of shipment targets encompasses software as well as hardware. Whereas the company originally aimed to ship around 10 percent fewer games than the 200 million units shipped in fiscal 1999, now the company targets a number that is 15 percent below that figure.
A slump in business results was expected to accompany the shift from the PS to the PS2 game machine.
However, the transition in software was just starting to move along smoothly. A total of 16.90 million units of software for the PS2 were shipped worldwide in the fiscal 2000 third quarter, and by region that total included some 8.5 million units in the United States, 4.5 million units in Europe and 4 million units in Japan. Shipments of software for the PS declined by 33 percent compared to the same period of the previous year to 54 million units.
(Nikkei Electronics)
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