SCEA president Jack Tretton says final release plans may not be known before September.

Sony has intimated that gamers outside Japan may not be getting their hands on the newly-announced NGP this year.

Speaking to Engadget, SCEA president Jack Tretton was asked to clarify the vague announcement that the Next Generation Portable would be out in “holiday 2011”.

“I know that’s rather ambiguous, and that’s for a reason,” he said. “I think our goal is always to launch [during the] holidays when the majority of sales are done. You want to have a worldwide simultaneous launch.

“Having said that, this’ll be our sixth platform launch, and it’s very difficult to have the quantities to be able to launch on a worldwide basis on the same date. So while that’s the goal, the reality might be something different. I think our goal is, we would get at least one territory out by the end of holiday 2011.”

When asked when we might know more, Tretton said: “We probably won’t know until fall. I don’t know that we’d have more detail for you at E3 [in June].”

Sony’s history of hardware releases suggests it is unlikely that NGP will see release outside Japan this year. PSP debuted in Japan in December 2004, reached North America in March 2005 and finally hit EU shelves the following September. Similarly, PS3 released in Japan and North America in November 2006, but didn’t arrive on European shores until March 2007.

Source: http://www.next-gen.biz/news/sony-admits-worldwide-ngp-release-is-“difficult”

In all likelyhood, that one territory Tretton is talking about is Japan. Followed by the US in Feb/March followed by Europe in March/April. This is just my take on it though. 3DS will be out for a year by then and will have some nice games already out. Sony will have to catch up.

edit: In the title it says NPG, should be NGP offcourse, my bad.

I knew winter 2011 was too unlikely to be true.

yes!!! more money for me to spend on games in 2011.

sixth platform? I only count five. PS1, PS2, PS3, PSP, NGP. Or do they count the PSX, too?

Kind of confused at that? Maybe they are talking about the phone thing. 

bump

My guess it that they're counting the PSX as well.

The longer it takes for them to release it, the longer Nintendo has to establish 3DS without competition and i think Sony should try to avoid that. I think PSP was doomed in PAL-land when they decided to give the DS a six months headstart.

Not only the 3ds, by next year the market will be flooded with quad core devices from other companies.

If it's gonna launch post-holiday, many people will have spend their money on other stuff, like 3DS, kunect, Zelda 25th anniversary pack :p or a ps3 for 200 bucks.