Sony has suspended production of its PSX games console-cum-personal video recorder in a bid to flush the channel of unsold stock. According to Sony officials cited by Japanese magazine Shuukan Gendai, the move is a temporary one, but they could not say when production of the machine would begin again. Whenever manufacture resumes, the delay doesn't say much for the demand the public has for the machine. Either Japanese consumers are not buying the machine, or Sony wildly overestimated the numbers that would do so. The bottom line is that there are too many PSXs sitting on dealers' shelves.
Sony PlayStation chief Ken Kutaragi claimed that some 100,000 units were sold during the PSX's first week of release, last December, but clearly sales have fallen off over recent months. The PSX has certainly had a troublesome birth and infancy. Originally touted for its ability to cope with DVD+R and DVD+RW as well as DVD-R and DVD-RW, Sony was forced to drop that feature from the machine at launch. Support for the 'plus' formats only arrived last month with a downloadable system software patch.
News source: The Register
