In a rather disappointing speech Kazuo Hirai, the President of Sony Computer Entertainment, announced today at Tokyo Game Show 2007 another embarrassing delay for Sony.

Hirai, the man who replaced two months ago Ken Kutaragi, said that the launch of Home, the virtual 3D gaming world, was postponed for spring 2008.

Sony’s project Home was announced earlier this year at Game Developers Conference by Phil Harrison, President, Worldwide Studios, Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE).

As Harrison described it, “Home” for PS3 users appears to be a mix of SecondLife and Nintendo's Mii, in which the avatars are very customizable and designed to look like real life humans. Harrison said that players will be able to communicate via voice, text chat (supported by a USB keyboard or a virtual keyboard) and through canned speech and gesture. The environment looks like a luxury resort and Sony said that every PS3 owner using 'Home' will get their own private apartment, which can be customized with almost any media available on PlayStation 3's HDD.

Also Sony has embedded into the game the possibility of displaying custom content on public displays within the virtual world, opening the way to showing advertisements, trailers, and user-created content.

Sony said Home will have a “Hall of Fame,” where the users can display their 3D trophies, unlocked through in-game milestones in PS3 games.

Of course, “Home” was intended to stimulate users into buying and playing new PS3 games, which will lead to the unlocking of different items within the virtual world.

Initially “home” was scheduled to be released this fall, but today Kazuo Hirai explained that Sony is not ready with their homework.

“We want this to be a worldwide service,” Hirai said. “…We want to make sure that we have a range of services which can be satisfactory to our users throughout the world… so we decided to delay the service’s launch date… Please be patient in this regard.”

Although it was widely anticipated that Sony will use the Tokyo gaming event to lower the price of its gaming console, Kazuo Hirai said there is be "no surprise in this regard this year".

"Price is a very important aspect, but at the same time the urgent matter is to what extent we can further enrich the software titles," he said.

Hirai referred to last year’s Tokyo Game Show, when Ken Kutaragi announced that Sony decided to slash the price of PlayStation 3 by 20 percent, but only for the Japanese market.

PlayStation 3’s price was heavily criticized by analysts and gamers alike, even from the moment it was announced for the first time. But Sony argued that the price is fully justified, because PlayStation 3 is also a media entertainment hub due to its BluRay drive.

Even with its BluRay, PlayStation 3 is lagging far behind its competitors and it was constantly outsold by Nintendo Wii and Xbox 360.

For example, according to Video Game Chartz, Nintendo has sold since its launch approximately 11.45 million units (3.59 million in Japan, 4.69 in the US and 3.17 in other areas) compared to Xbox 360’s 10.89 million units (only 440,000 in Japan, 7.03 million in the US and 1.38 million in the rest of the world). Although it was launched in US in the same month as Wii, PlayStation 3 holds only 17% of the next-gen console market, with 4.57 million units sold.

According to Enterbrain, a Japanese research company, in August in Japan (considered until now to be PlayStation’s turf) Nintendo Wii has crushed Sony’s gaming console. Enterbrain said that during last month Nintendo managed to sell 245,653 units while Sony had to be content with only 81,541 PlayStation 3 consoles sold.

Sony’s stubbornness to slash the price of its gaming console is rather odd especially since after in July they decided to cut 100 dollars from the console’s price, there has been a rise in sales. July was a fine month for Sony as the Japanese company sold the maximum number of PS3 units, since its November 2006 debut. 159,000 consoles were sold in July compared to 98,500 the month before. But it seems like Sony didn’t learn anything from this experience.

Tough Kazuo Hirai admitted that so far PlayStation 3 is far away from being a real success. "The results we have produced so far have been unfortunate”, he said.

About Nintendo and Wii, Hirai said: "We belong to the same industry, and I think we seem to be aiming at different targets. Whatever the industry in question, there is no way that just one company can have everything.”

Still, Kazuo Hirai said today that the company will focus more on promoting PlayStation 3 a game machine.

"As the fundamental point of our system, I think it is still a game machine," Hirai said. "We want people to first enjoy it for the possibility of interactive games. If we pursue too many directions, people will keep asking us, 'What is PlayStation'?"

During his speech, Hirai also unveiled the widely expected DualShock 3 controller with a rumble feature, which looks exactly like the Sixaxis and will launch in Japan in November, and North America and Europe in spring 2008. No exact date or pricing are mentioned, nor does he say whether it has to be bought separately or will be bundled with future PS3s.

Hirai mentioned that the DualShock 3 will be supported by nine titles when it releases, including Devil May Cry 4, Ratchet & Clank Future, Echochrome and both Metal Gear Solid 4 and Metal Gear Online.