Bad news of PS3 gamers in Europe: they won’t be able to get hold of the new PlayStation 3 this holiday season as launching of the PS3 will be delayed in Europe. Sony has also announced last Wednesday that it will postpone launching of the PlayStation 3 in Australia, Middle East and Africa because of the insufficient supply of a key component in the game console’s Blu-ray disc laser.

The launching of PS3 in the said regions will be delayed until March next year while launching in North America and Japan will proceed on November 17 and 11, respectively, as earlier planned.

Furthermore, the company announced that only 4,000 units of PS3s will available in the US and 100,000 PS3s in Japan upon the launching of this much awaited game console, contrary to what Sony Computer Entertainment America said about two weeks ago that the company is still on schedule to ship 2 million PS3s in November and another 2 million by the end of the year.

In the recent statement, Sony Computer Entertainment Chief Ken Kutaragi said that the “delay is inevitable” although the company has been working so hard to solve the problem.

This is the second time the company put off the release of this seventh generation era video game console. It was initially expected to be launched last spring.