Shortage "definitely" having an impact, says Sony.

March 11, 2010 - Sony continues to feel the burn from "tight" PlayStation 3 retailer supply. The post-holiday sales remain down since December when the company saw record-breaking U.S.sales of 1.36 million consoles.

"There continues to be incredible demand for PlayStation 3, but tight inventory is definitely having an impact on recent sales numbers," said Patrick Seybold, Sr. Director of Corporate Communications in a statement given to IGN.

Today's February U.S. sales results saw Sony move 360,000 PlayStation 3 units for the month. The company has sold 637, 000 in the U.S. in the first two months of the year.

The company isn't too worried, however, as it expects its first-party offerings for the rest this year will give a much-needed boost to PlayStation 3 sales as retail stock is replenished.

"This year will once again showcase how deep and broad our content offerings are with breakout titles like Heavy Rain, which ranked in the top ten in February with only a week of sales in the month," he added. "God of War III which will be a multi-million unit seller and hardware driver is launching later this month, followed by ModNation Racers, Gran Turismo 5, SOCOM 4 and many more."

http://ps3.ign.com/articles/107/1076952p1.html

Sony should increase production.

They will have these issues probably for another month or so.

It's really bad timing for the continued console shortages. Heavy Rain just hit the shelves and you have God of War 3 next week. I wonder if the console shortages have anything to do with the delay of GT5?

I think they're having this issue due to redesign of PS3 slim making it lighter. They have to halt some of the production to make way for the new model.

The delay is probably because of the hardware revision the PS3 is undergoing right now.

terrible idea.

What ever the case may be, it's just really bad timing. I forgot to mention FFXIII as well. Sony had a lot of momentum coming out of Christmas and they had a favorable game release schedule for the first quarter of 2010. It's too bad there's not more systems to go around. I haven't seen a PS3 at either of my local Walmart's for 2 months now.

why is that? there are shortages and the system is just about at the break-even point so I don't see why not.

Because they cost money to produce  and second they cost money to stock and money to transport.

Don't forget that every dollars counts and we are talking millions, witch if not wisely used can turn into a lot of loss in profit.

so they pay a lot of money to estimate numbers just so they don't overship and they don't lose a lot more money.