Sony Considers Outsourcing PSP Production

Sony Computer Entertainment president Ken Kutaragi has stated that the company is considering the possibility of outsourcing production of the PlayStation Portable (PSP) overseas, possibly to China or Taiwan. “We have to somehow increase our production capacity as we're not prepared to start selling in Europe, we've run out of units in the U.S. and it's still selling well in Japan,” Kutaragi told Bloomberg News at a games industry meeting in Tokyo recently. Sony claimed in February that it aimed to more than double monthly production of the PSP to 2 million units by this summer. The only current production facility is the Kisarazu factory in Chiba, east of Tokyo, where currently only 1 million a units a month are being made. Taipei-based newspaper The Commercial Times is already reporting that Taiwan’s biggest electronics company, Hon Hai Precision Industry, has won the order to make the PSP for Sony, with production reported to be scheduled for as early as July. However, both Hon Hai and Sony have declined to comment on the report, with Sony spokeswoman Yoshiko Furusawa insisting that no decision has yet been made. Sony is aiming to ship 12 million units of the PSP this fiscal year, after missing targets for the previous year. Currently 2.97 million PSPs have been shipped to the U.S. and Japan (a European launch is not scheduled until September) while around 6 million units of the rival Nintendo DS portable have been shipped worldwide.