"Some of our ops guys were actually just in China, and also in Japan just reviewing the [production] lines and everything else," Hirai told GameSpot. "But they are preparing as we speak to get the manufacturing going. We've not announced and we haven't set really a specific date to say, 'As of this day we're going to start manufacturing.'"
Mercenary eBayers may also want to get their names down for one of the new consoles, as Hirai also admitted hardware shortages would be a problem for the machine. "We're going with three territories, so we haven't really come up with an allocation just yet," he said. "But even if you do the simple math you're talking about less than 700,000 units per territory, per major territory between launch and the end of the year. So even if there was some fluctuation - you give Japan more, you give the US more, what have you - you're going to end up with some shortages."
"So I think that if we've done our jobs right and if we've been able to really have the consumers become interested in this product, then, unfortunately, I think it's going to be very much of a challenge to be able to meet every single unit demand that's out there in the market. That's just a logistical impossibility."
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