For the past several months, Sony has been the ostrich of the gaming industry. Amid reports of chip shortages, blue-ray technology hold-ups, and confessions from third party developers that there’s no way the Playstation 3 will launch anytime soon, Sony has kept its head in the sand and stood by its original plan for a spring launch (as in this spring, as in just a few weeks). Just before Sony’s insistence could be labeled complete insanity, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun newspaper is reporting that the PlayStation 3 is being delayed until “early November” in Japan due to complications with the AACS copy protection system being implemented into the Blu-ray specification. And yes, Sony has confirmed the report.

Seeing as the Ps3 won’t hit Japan until November, a holiday launch in the U.S. seems far-fetched. Sony’s only chance would be turning around a week or two later and releasing the system in the U.S. or having a simultaneous worldwide launch, which doesn’t seem probable give the usual shortage of launching systems and the PS3’s already admitted problems. While this will help Microsoft’s Xbox 360 establish an even larger user base through the end of the year, the announcement is especially good news for Nintendo, as it means the Revolution will most likely be the only console launching this holiday season. Considering Sony’s console market domination, this gives the Revolution a chance to shine instead of being ignored by rabid Christmas shoppers whose kids can’t stop whining about how much they want a PS3. And let’s not forget that Sony is still announcing major PS2 titles for next year, like this week’s God of War 2 announcement. On a side note, having just completed the amazing God of War, I’ll buy the sequel even if it doesn’t hit the PS2 until the PS9 is already out (remember that great commercial?).

Of course maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Sony will pull off a miracle and actually launch the PS3 in time for holiday shopping. No matter what happens, it’d be naive to say the PS3 is doomed if it doesn’t launch in time; Sony could release the system in 2010 and people would still line up to buy it. However, this delay could allow their competitors to play catch up. And who knows? Maybe this means consumers will actually give Nintendo’s funky Revolution controller a chance.

For more PS3 speculation, check out this interesting article over at 1up that examines whether Sony’s silence is a sign of confidence or madness.

Update: Sony held a business conference in Japan today and announced more details on the PS3 along with some PSP related announcements, which you can read here. Not only will the PS3 come out the gates with a 60GB hard drive (which is upgradeable) with Linux preinstalled, but it also will have an online service called the PlayStation Network Platform, which will feature functions such as matchmaking, messaging, rankings, friends lists, voice/video chat, in-game shopping, and game downloads to the hard drive. Best of all, the service will be free (although so is the basic version of Xbox Live, and it’s pretty worthless). The biggest surprise? A simultaneous launch was announced for Japan, North America, and Europe. Remember the shortage of PS2’s for the first six months after launch? Yeah, good luck with that Sony.