Sony PS3 and Nintendo Revolution to Ship in 2007?
01/05/06
Stop the presses, folks, because Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Revolution consoles might not appear until 2007. At least, that's the inference from a third-party press release from the Consumer Electronics Show.
Buried in an announcement from SanDisk, which was eager to talk about the functionality of its new Cruzer Crossfire Flash memory cards, the company said consumers will find the devices oh-so-useful for viewing images and listening to music on the next-generation consoles, including "Microsofts recently released Xbox 360."
What the announcement says after that, though, is far more intriguing than the fact that SanDisk's drives come in four colors and range in size from 512MB to 4GB.
"And early announcements from both Sony and Nintendo have indicated that their next-generation game consoles PlayStation3 for Sony and Revolution for Nintendo will also support USB connections when the consoles go on sale next year."
"Next year." The press release is dated January 5, 2006. It was released during CES, which takes place in 2006. "Next year" means 2007, folks.
For months we at DailyGame have wondered whether Sony's "spring 2006" release estimate for the PS3 was a farse, and considering the company hasn't discussed anything about its next-generation console, it's safe to say "spring 2006" is total garbage, especially in the North American market. So is a 2007 PS3 release, at least in North America, that far off? Perhaps not, according to this SanDisk news.
But how about Nintendo's Revolution? We've seen the controller but heard nothing about the games, online service or pricing. Is 2006 a likely release year? It's feasible, yes. But is it likely or realistic? That's hard to know, but let's just say we wouldn't be surprised if it slipped to spring 2007 for North American gamers.
Of course Sony and Nintendo weren't about to comment on the potential release dates for their next-generation consoles, so for now, all we have to go on is this possible slip-up by SanDisk. Keep in mind that the 2007 reference could have simply been an oversight by SanDisk's PR people writing the release in 2005. But it sure makes the mind wander, doesn't it?
DailyGame expects to bring you much more news on the PS3, Revolution and second-gen Xbox 360 games in the weeks leading up to E3, as well as during the show. Stay tuned.