On Monday, Sony will start selling the PSX, its much-ballyhooed home entertainment center in Japan. Looking like the PlayStation 2's big white brother, the PSX lets users play the Sony console's games, play CDs and DVDs, watch TV, and record video onto DVDs or its hard drive, TiVo-style. The PSX comes in two models: the 250-gigabyte, 99,800 yen DESR-7000, which can hold around 48 hours of video, and the 160-gigabyte 79,800 DESR-5000, which can only record 30 hours.
Both PSX models are scheduled for international release in time for the 2004 holidays. But many analysts are questioning whether it will even be a hit in the Japanese market. The PSX is perhaps more of a publicity stunt," Kazumasa Kubota, an analyst at Okasan Securities, told the Associated Press. "It will probably sell well for a month or two but the momentum isn't likely to hold up after that."
The main reason for analysts' lessened enthusiasm for the PSX is because the machine being released isn't the same one that was unveiled at CEATEC in October. That device promised to play MP3 files, support all three DVD formats--DVD-R, DVD-RW and DVD+RW, and have a 24x DVD recorder. But pressure to get the machine on the market by the end of the year caused Sony to eliminate those features (the current DVD recorder is only 12x). "Lowering the specifications of the PSX hurt Sony's image," said UFJ Tsubasa electronic analyst Kazuya Yamamoto. "Did it turn out to be a superior machine as a DVD recorder? I certainly don't think so."
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