Sony still planning to ship 6m PS3 units

Nick Sharples, head of corporate communications at SCEE, has said the company is still on track to ship 6 million PlayStation 3 units by the end of March.

The confirmation came in an interview with Bloomberg at the CeBIT electronics show in Germany.

Sharples said that Sony will release PS3 shipment estimates for the financial year ending March 2008 on May 13 this year.

The 6 million target was first announced by Ken Kutaragi, then president of SCEI, a year ago. At that time, the company was planning a global rollout for PS3 in November - but later delayed the European launch until March 2007.

Sharples also confirmed that a beta test for PlayStation Home, the new online service unveiled by Sony's Phil Harrison at GDC last week, will begin next month.

PlayStation 3 is due to launch in Europe a week from today. Sony has pledged that 1 million units will be available across SCEE territories on day one - more than the number of Wii and Xbox 360 units available at launch put together.

Nintendo is also planning to ship 6 million units of its next-gen console by the end of March, and according to marketing boss Laurent Fischer, huge demand for Wii makes that target will be met.