It is official, the Playstation 3 has been delayed till Christmas 2006! This time it is straight from the top of Sony. The PS3 will still be launched simultaneously in North America, Europe and Japan.

Ken Kutaragi, the head Sony’s video games division, made the announcement at a hastily called news conference after reports of the delay surfaced in the business daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun and other papers.

The new timeline means that the PlayStation 3 will still hit store shelves simultaneously in Japan, North America and Europe, just in time for Christmas.

Kutaragi said Sony is still trying to finalize the copyright protection technology and other standards for the Blu-ray DVD disc, the format for PlayStation 3, and next-generation video for the company’s electronics gadgets in the works.

"I’d like to apologize for the delay," Kutaragi said at a Tokyo hotel. "I have been cautious because many people in various areas are banking on the potential of the next-generation DVD."

Blu-ray preparations were initially to have been completed by last September, but now won’t be finalized until next month, he said.

Read the rest on Yahoo.