Good Times For Nintendo & Microsoft

So Sony announced that they will be delaying the the PS3 until a November release date because of standard issues with the copy protection for the blue-ray drive (and people criticised Microsoft going with DVD). November is possibly just the Japan release so expect 2007 for the US and Easter 2007 for the UK and Europe.

The thing about this is that in most generations of consoles most users only buy two of the home theatre consoles. Portable is a little different, but if Nintendo can release before the PS3 then they stand a very good chance at being everybody's seconds choice.

For Microsoft this means that they will have free time to do whatever they want for much longer and have more time to create a presence in Japan. This announcement will probably mean that it will be longer until Microsoft drops the price of the 360, but expect a global price drop just before Christmas. By November there will likely be about 72 titles for the 360 as Microsoft has been releasing six new titles a month.

Sony will probably still be able to show something playable at E3 because this is just and issue with the copy protection (supposedly anyway). There is now way that this can be positive for Sony as many people that where weighting for the PS3 will now buy 360s while they wait.

UPDATE: Turns out that the launch will be in all territories this November.