According to the Taiwan Commercial Times, the PS3 is in production. The news story says that the first PS3s will be delivered to Sony by the end of this month with a production run of 200,000 units. The manufacturer of the PS3s, Asustek, declined to comment on the story. Asustek is known more commonly as Asus, the manufacturer of many popular PC components.
The report from Commercial Times further states that Sony is expecting a total production run of 2 million PS3s by October. If the PS3 is truly in production, this will mean that Sony will have more than a sufficient length of time needed to produce sufficient quantities of their next gen console before launch. In comparison, the Xbox 360 had only 69 days of production, as compared to Sony,s available 114 day manufacturing window. However, industry rumors have surfaced that the Cell processor, the heart of the PS3, may be having quality control issues in producing acceptable yields during the making of the chip. Sony has neither confirmed or denied the reports since the first rumors started flying nearly two months ago.
Many considered the Xbox 360 launch a rough debut, as customers all over the world were disappointed due to shortages. Sony, however, stands to have a better chance in fulfilling consumer requests with this surprise boost to the production timeframe.
