When was the last time you read something positive about Sony?

Thanks to severe shortages of the blue laser diodes needed for Blu-ray goodness, they have reduced their initial shipments of the PS3 from 2 million to 500K. Not that anyone was planning on buying one... BUT STILL!

Europe gets the finger as usual, they won't see the PS3 until sometime in 2007. That's a huge market that big companies seem to see as second class and completely ignore until they get Asia and USofA all stocked up. And when you consider that the cost of items over there is usually 50% higher than US equivalent, it seems like that'd be pure money.

Earlier it was speculated that Toshiba would delay the rollout of HD-DVD players until there was something available to go with them, which by all signs is April 18, the day Warner releases three whole movies on the new format. (How's that for launch selection?) Toshiba has now come out and officially announced that they are delaying HD-DVD. They did not mention April 18 specifically but I'd say it's a safe bet they will use that as their launch date.

That means we have three more weeks to spread the word! If you know someone considering an HD-DVD purchase, please send them a link to this page so they know what they're getting into.

Warner, who is supposedly going to be the first studio to release movies on HD-DVD, has delayed their first releases by three weeks from March 28 to April 18. Toshiba has said they are likely to delay the release of their players to match the launch of the first content, though they haven't officially announced it yet. HD-DVD's first-to-market advantage over Blu-ray is getting smaller and smaller, and now looks like they'll beat Blu-ray to market by only one month. (Blu-ray is currently scheduled to launch May 23). This is unfortunate because if it were life and death, and I had to choose between HD-DVD or Blu-ray, I would take HD-DVD any day of the week. I mean, considering all the crap Sony has pulled, I just don't like them anymore.

Also, Toshiba is apparently only shipping 10,000 total HD-DVD players for its intial launch, indicating they aren't exactly expecting steller sales. Of course, with only three movies at launch, it shouldn't be too surprising.

Look's like everyone's hope for a cheap Blu-ray player sometime soon just went bye bye. (Cheap being a relative term of course.) Sony today announced that the PlayStation 3 will be delayed until November. Supposedly they are working on some extra security features to protect the games from being copied. They're also probably doing it to save a ton of money. I'm sure they'll still lose money initially on PS3 hardware sales, but at that point Blu-ray will have been on the market for 6 months so their manufacturing costs will have come down significantly. We'll see what happens!