Remember that big screen at the end of Sony's PlayStation Meeting last week that said the newly unveiled PlayStation 4 would be "coming holiday 2013?" Apparently, that slide might not apply to all three of the major regions for the video game market. Some could see the system slip to next year.
Speaking to Digital Spy, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe's UK managing director Fergal Gara hedged quite a bit when asked if the announced 2013 launch window applied to Europe.
"We will launch it this year," he said. "Exactly what regions, what timing, is being worked through. Which regions in 2013—is it all of them, is it some of them? Is there some degree of phasing? We'll reveal that in more detail later, but we can't yet."
When pressed, Gara said "at least" one region would be getting the system in 2013, but he couldn't confirm whether the system would hit "all or some of [the regions]" this year.
A staggered worldwide hardware release wouldn't exactly be new for Sony. While the PlayStation 3 was released in Japan and North America within a week of each other in November 2006, Europe had to wait until March 23, 2007 to get the system. The PlayStation 2 hit Japan in March of 2000 before hitting North America in October and Europe in November. Japan also got the original PlayStation first, in December 1994, more than nine months before the September 1995 North American and European launches.
Edge previously reported that it has been "told" by unnamed sources that the PS4 will hit the US and Japan by Christmas, before a European rollout in "early 2014."
Microsoft has yet to announce any concrete plans for the successor to the Xbox, but leaked documents and other reports all point to plans for a late 2013 release. That could follow a rumored unveiling at an April event.
