But it still trails Nintendo's Wii, which also launched in November, 2006. Last year in Japan, for instance, Nintendo's Wii console outsold Sony's PS3 3-to-1, according to Tokyo market researcher Enterbrain. Macquarie Securities predicts Sony will ship just 9.2 million consoles this fiscal year, not the 11 million the company has forecast.
Stringer likely to stay
Until now, gaming enthusiasts have been the console's main buyers. It did not take much to convince them that the Blu-ray discs were ideal for cramming in more of the richly detailed pictures and realistic sound that the PS3 had been designed for.
But for anyone else, splurging on a PS3 would have meant gambling on one of the DVD formats. There is less risk in that now, which gives Sony a chance to bill the PS3 as an affordable Blu-ray player that is also a gaming machine, connects to the Internet, and comes with a hard-disk drive for downloading games, videos, and music.
Stringer will be glad to have one less distraction to deal with. Last month, at a roundtable discussion with reporters in Tokyo, he suggested that he would be at the helm for another three years. He will want to devote himself to rolling out an online channel, like Apple's iTunes store, that can deliver Sony's huge library of movies, music, and games to all kinds of gizmos--and not have to spend time explaining why Sony still has problems.
With Cliff Edwards, in BusinessWeek's Silicon Valley bureau.
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