Consoles != Money

First of all, don't think for a second that Sony cares about you, you might as well pray for one because it's more likely that divine intervention will get you a PS3 than appealing to Sony's sense of decency. Or you can hire a Chinese immigrant, apparently that's working out pretty well for the Japanese, and eBay...

Bitter diatribes aside, I believe the truth of the matter is consoles don't actually equal money for the company, at least not in the short run. Consoles are sold at a loss, but the money is made up on the videogames in which a cut of every $60 goes straight to Sony. With the relatively small launch line-up that the PS3 has (which is mostly composed of ports from other systems), Sony is probably expecting to lose a fair bit of money on the launch, and it is entirely possible they are trying to cut their losses by slowing down the launch schedule.

It is also entirely possible that they have completely screwed up the manufacturing process, and they really can't manage to produce near enough to meet demand. I mean 400,000 down to 200,000? Why is that only being announced now? Did it sneak up on you? Was one of your warehouses raided by PS3 hoarding warlords? Doubtful. The truth is they didn't want to stall out their hype machine with the little fact that on launch day, most of us are going to be disappointed.

Really there's no excuse for it, I mean look at Nintendo. 1.4 million Wii's worldwide at launch and another 4 million by Christmas. It is unclear whether they will hit these goals, but they seem pretty confident about it. The Wii is probably the last system I want to buy (yeah I'm kind of a graphics whore, sue me), but you gotta respect that at the very least they are trying to meet demand. Sony on the other hand, I think takes sick delight in the fact people are camping out as early as Monday in order to get their hands on a PS3.

Do I want a PS3? You bet. Did I actually take a day off to try and wait in line? Yep. Is it worth all this trouble? That remains to be seen...