My friend Justin posted earlier this week that Sony is only shipping 200,000 PS3 units to the US this Christmas season. The news originally came from Bloomberg. They’ve stated that Sony came nowhere near it’s goal of shipping 400,000 units for the Playstation 3 November 17th debut, thanks to a shortage of a laser used in the PS3 Blu-Ray DVD player.

“We shipped as many PlayStation 3 units into the North American market as possible and continue our efforts in supplying systems to retailers nationwide through the holidays,” —Sony spokeswoman Kimberly Otzman

Sony will continue to airlift in shipments of the PS3 weekly, and their goal is to have 1 million units in U.S. stores by the end of 2006. But the shortage has led gaming geeks everywhere to line up for days outside stores. We happened to be at Best Buy a day or so before the launch and already tents were up outside. The crowd was mostly under 25, white males, but I imagine that there were a few enterprising young men in there who intended not to use the PS3 for pleasure, but rather, to resell on eBay and make a profit. Some of the new PS3 systems have already sold on eBay for as much as $5,000.

More than half of the stores that did a PS3 preorder will not have enough units to cover those preorders. Nintendo planned a bit better, and due to that, Wii is sold out in some stores, but the company expects to continue to selll throughout the holiday season.

As for us, we’re going to get a Playstation 2. It’s our first family gaming system, and I’m simply not enough of a geek to drop $600 on something like that. Not to mention, I couldn’t get a PS3 if I wanted one now!

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