Filed under: Gaming

This whole PS3 delay game has really become something of an amusing sideshow at this point: after so much bad press concerning nearly every single aspect of the console, you’d think that Sony would do everything possible to ensure that things run smoothly from here until launch, and yet word on the street is that Europe may be victim to still another postponement. It should be noted we have no independent confirmation of the following information, but Spanish gaming site MeriStation is reporting that Ken Kutaragi recently admitted that supply problems for Japan and North America could force the European PS3 launch to be delayed until May — which would mean that Japanese and American consumers might have their systems nearly six months before the eager gamers in the rest of the world. Now keep in mind that Kutaragi also supposedly said that Sony has not modified its European launch plans at this time, so right now we’re only looking at a “what if” scenario. Still, this rollout has been plagued with nothing but problems since day one, and as much as we’d like to see Sony pull this one off considering the shaky condition it’s currently in, we’re starting to think that these little issues and public gaffes may add up to big problems.

[Thanks, Mercenary]

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

So if you’re a consumer electronics manufacturer in the midst of a highly-publicized product release, you’d think that the last group of customers you’d want to alienate would be the die-hard fanatics who participate in your forums everyday and were among the very first to place orders for said product, right? Well judging by the tone of the comments on the TiVo Community boards, that’s exactly what the company has down to its so-called VIP subscribers — you know, the ones who possess those coveted lifetime subscriptions and woke up extra-early this past Tuesday to ensure that their new Series3 boxes would arrive the next day. Except TiVo apparently wasn’t ready to handle the deluge of orders that it received, and after two days of wondering what the heck was going on (calls to customer service were met by confusion and misinformation on the part of the phone reps), everyone finally received an email confirming the delays and promising shipment by Friday. Luckily TiVo had the good sense to refund the shipping charges — in some cases $50 worth — to these early adopters, but much to the VIPs’ displeasure, they learned that they’d be unable to cancel their pending orders if they wanted to go the retail route; and what’s more, there was some confusion as to whether store-bought TiVos would even be eligible for the $200 lifetime subscription transfer. As of this writing it seems that only a handful of folks actually got their boxes on Friday, with everyone else scrambling to reschedule the CableCARD installation appointments they’d made with their cable providers. So while there’s little argument that TiVo makes a fine product with a world-class interface, perhaps when it eventually comes out with the Series4, it’ll do some better planning or leave distribution to the professionals — apparently, TiVo and e-commerce don’t seem to go too well together lately.

[Via HDBeat]

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

We should start off by saying that this could be nothing but cautionary corporate-speak, but rather than confirming the scheduled January ship date for Windows Vista — which is what everyone at the company’s annual analyst meeting wanted to hear — Microsoft exec Kevin Johnson seemingly opened up the door to fresh delay rumors by telling attendees that the beleaguered OS will be released “when it is available.” Johnson’s comments came as a response to analysts who wanted to know if Vista was still on track for a January release; instead of a simple “yes,” however, he told the group that “we are going to ship the product when it is ready, and we are going to take it milestone by milestone.” Now, what sounds like a non-denial of further delays could simply be part of a new policy to avoid making specific promises, but following Bill Gates’s recent “statistical analysis” that Vista is only 80% likely to ship in January, this development is troubling to say the least. At this point we don’t really know what to expect anymore, and since our current XP-powered setup already does everything we need it to, we’re getting pretty close to not caring if Vista is ever released at all.

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Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

Filed under: Handhelds

Filed under: Desktops, Gaming

Filed under: Gaming

About the last thing Sony wants at this point is to see yet another disappointed PlayStation 3 delay meme post here on Engadget, which is why it’s heartening to hear — however uncorroborated — that Asustek (Sony’s supposed component partner in manufacturing PlayStation 3 motherboards) is said to be shipping 200,000 units per month now, and is ramping up to as many as 2m in October in preparations for that November launch. We have to voice a little skepticism though. No, not about the source of the information, but the causes of the delays. Despite Sony’s variety of problems developing the PS3, it was never the Cell or the console’s innards that seems primarily responsible for the delays to date; the finger we must point, dear readers, is to that Blu-ray drive, which has plagued product after product. Still, we have no way of proving the validity of the information to begin with, nor figures on these units or Asustek’s supposed ramp-up schedule, so anyone taking heed is apparently trusting the reportage of Chinese newspaper Commercial Times on this one.

[Thanks, CoreyTheGent]

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Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

If you’re one of the many folks eagerly awaiting the January release of Windows Vista, then there’s a small-but-not-insignificant chance that you may be in for a letdown — a 20% chance, actually, according to outgoing Microsoft CTO, lifelong Engadget reader, and occasional video pirate Bill Gates. During a presentation in Cape Town, South Africa, Mr. Gates informed his audience that although there’s an 80% probability that the next-gen OS will ship as scheduled, “we’ve got to get this absolutely right,” and stressed that “if the feedback from the beta tests shows it is not ready for prime time, I’d be glad to delay it.” Now, we can’t imagine that anyone would want to purchase buggy software, so it’s reassuring to see that Microsoft is committed to only pushing a polished product out the door, but we have to say that Gates’ choice of words here makes him come across as just a little cavalier. Because if he’s “glad” to continue frustrating us with these tragi-comic delays, then there’s probably quite a few people out there who will be just as glad to stick with their copies of XP out of spite — or even worse, make the dreaded leap over to Leopard or Linux.

[Thanks, Matt and Oliver O.]

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Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

In what may turn out to be yet another crushing blow to HD-hungry consumers, it looks like Samsung could be joining Sony, Pioneer, and, um, itself, in playing the Vista-like Blu-ray delay game that continues to amuse and frustrate us. As of right now, the facts are these: UK tech site Pocket-Lint sent an email to Bite Communications, Samsung’s British PR firm, in order to confirm what we all thought was the BD-P1000‘s June 25th release date; instead of a confirmation, however, Pocket-Lint received a surprising reply stating that “unfortunately, the release of the Blu-ray has been delayed until September.” Before you start freaking out, though, keep in mind that at this point details are still very thin — we can’t even be certain if this supposed delay applies to the US launch, or only affects our friends over in Great Britain. As you’d expect, we have our crack team of low-paid interns furiously dialing every Samsung representative we can find a number for, and you’ll be the first to know when we can finally pin someone down on a solid release date, so stay tuned.

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Filed under: Home Entertainment

Under heavy pressure in the form of a lawsuit filed by nearly all of TV land’s major content providers, industry giant Cablevision has announced that it will delay the rollout of its networked DVR offering until the service’s legality is confirmed in court. The lawsuit, filed by the four key networks and their parent studios, claims that Cablevision’s plan to store customers’ recorded swag on their own servers as opposed to local set-top boxes constitutes a retransmission of copyrighted material, and therefore violates pre-existing agreements the company has with its providers. Cablevision, on the other hand, argues that networked DVR services are only facilitating “fair-use” of their broadcasts by consumers, who have already paid for any programs they intend to record. The outcome of this suit will be closely monitored by other players in the cable industry as well, because a victory for Cablevision would allow Cox, Comcast, et al. to begin offering their own remote storage — good news for consumers, but perhaps bad news for our old friend TiVo.

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Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

We have to admit to occasionally sharing in some of the schadenfreude that surfaces on the internets every time Microsoft announces yet another Windows Vista delay. However, this time we're willing to cut them a little slack. While headlines have been screaming about a new delay all day today, most of them seem to be based on some fairly ambiguous comments by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. Speaking with NEC execs in Japan, Ballmer commented that "We think we are on track for shipping early in [2007]. We've talked about the month, but we get a chance to critically assess all of the feedback we'll get from this beta release then confirm or move [the launch date] a few weeks." Ballmer also commented that he was looking forward to feedback from "hardware partners" about "when would they really like it." Now, a cynical take on Ballmer's comments would be that he's using the recently announced second beta of Vista, along with possible requests from hardware vendors, as an excuse to set the stage for a forthcoming announcement that Vista will indeed be delayed beyond January 2007. However, we'll look at the glass as half-full this time: Ballmer is truly interested in hearing from the beta testers and computer manufacturers, and really wants to factor their findings and needs into Vista's launch date. Besides, the thing is so late already; what's a few more weeks between friends, right?

Filed under: Peripherals

We knew it was too good to be true. The Optimus mini three keypad, which was due out this week, has apparently been delayed until August 15th, due to "additions and improvements," including bumping the button life to 100,000 presses, increasing OLED lifetime to 8,000 hours and adding a brightness control. Art Lebedev Studio has also apparently chosen to switch contract manufacturers, and will be producing the long-awaited device in Taiwan instead of China. So, what do loyal customers get for their patience? Something of a discount, since they were able to pre-order the mini three for $100. Lebedev is still accepting pre-orders for $120, but the price is expected to go up to $160 -- a pretty hefty bump for a product that, so far, exists only in mockups. Still, we're itching to see this one get real, so we hope this delay is just the usual hiccup for a new manufacturer creating an unusual product, and that we'll be able to check one of these out before the end of the summer.

[Thanks, Len]

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

hspace="4" border="0" align="right" src="http://www.engadget.com/media/2006/03/3060000000054243.jpg" alt="" />Given
Microsoft’s recent woes — the company seems to be under attack by everyone from Wall Street analysts to Google — the
last thing the company needs is a rumor that Windows Vista won’t be available by its recently href="http://www.engadget.com/2006/03/21/vista-delayed-until-early-2007/">revised January launch date. But that’s
what Redmond is getting hit with today, in the form of a research note from Gartner, which predicts a delay until at
least June for the consumer version of the program. According to Gartner, the new OS is “too complex” to be
ready by January. Microsoft has responded by saying that Vista is on target to make the launch. Gartner also says that
a delay until the spring is “nowhere as bad” as the slip from fall to January, which will result in a
Vista-free holiday season. Somehow, we suspect that beleaguered PC makers hoping for a sales bump from Vista upgrades
might have a little trouble taking solace from that argument.

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