Sony 'overreached' on PS3 Blu-Ray production - Harrison

Sony's Phil Harrison has admitted that the company "overreached" with its decision to include a Blu-ray drive in PlayStation 3.

Referring to the shortages of blue diodes that forced Sony to postpone the console's European launch until March, Harrison told GamesIndustry.biz's Rob Fahey, "we have overreached in production of the Blu-Ray component - I can't deny that".

"But that's the price you pay for adopting brand new, leading-edge technologies that will be future proof. We will resolve those issues - we are already catching up."

"We will continue to catch up on the production, and as you know, we haven't changed our full-year forecast of six million units [by March 2007], so we're only talking about a ramp-up issue. We're not talking about the fundamental design of the product itself," he added.

"There's no denying that we’ve had some very public challenges," he had said. "Today, it looks like a very difficult situation - but in the weeks, months and years to come, this will pale into zero."

Speaking as part of an interview being serialised on Sony's semi-official Three Speech blog, Harrison also addressed the issue of HDMI's late inclusion in the lower-end PlayStation 3, the 20GB model.

"The reason for the change was in reaction to a market trend, which is that much more displays are being sold with HDMI, earlier, than had been previously forecast. Not just Sony, but all the other TV manufacturers," he said.

"Although we didn't say it at E3, I think that the unspoken assumption was that we would always merge everything into HDMI eventually. We just made that decision earlier."