Ken Kutaragi, the chief mind behind Sony Corporation's (ADR) (NYSE: SNE) enormous PlayStation empire, will be leaving the Japanese electronics giant in June at the company's next annual shareholder's meeting. According to many industry pundits, the failure of the PlayStation 3 to almost immediately become world dominant was the impetus that made Kutaragi step down (more than be asked to leave).

The PlayStation franchise has been enormously popular for Sony and has led to the sale of 200 million gaming consoles worldwide. The decision to include a next-generation DVD player (Blu-ray) into the PlayStation 3, though, was a mistake that added hundreds of dollars to the console's price. In effect, the $599 price (for the upscale model) was out of reach for many and the console's sell-through has been a tad dismal to this point because of it (and possibly other reasons)

Meanwhile, Nintendo Co., Ltd's (ADR) (OTC:NTDOY) "lowly" Wii gaming console has taken the gaming world by storm, outselling both the PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Corporation's (NASDAQ: MSFT) Xbox 360 by a wide margin. It comes down to engaging customers (players) emotionally instead of having the highest-tech onboard, and Nintendo knows this. While Kutaragi will go down as Sony's most important executive (possibly ever), his latest creation may continue to flop and die a slow death. Although, it's only been six months since the PlayStation 3's release -- is the market (as always) just looking for instant gratification here. But, if Sony can't recover from the PlayStation 3 mess, will CEO Howard Stringer be the next one to "step down"?

Sony Corporation (NYSE: SNE) has announced that it has shipped one million Playstation 3 consoles in the U.S. from the day it launched in late November 2006 to the last day of the calendar year. Early reports said that Sony -- which was plagued with supply issues that forced it to make fewer initial consoles than it had hoped -- would sell only 800,000 consoles by year's end. So, it shipped over a million -- but how many sold?

Right now, the Playstation 3 is hard to find at stores and online. Nevertheless, Sony's shipments of one million PS3 consoles in the U.S. fulfilled half of its goal to ship two million PS3 consoles worldwide in 2006. Sony did not break out numbers to say how many global units it had sold in 2006 -- it just reported U.S. numbers shipped this time around.

Sony reported that it sold 197,000 PS3s on launch day, less than half of the 400,000 it had initially forecast. With the Microsoft Xbox 360 already on the market for a year and with the Nintendo Wii selling 476,000 consoles in the two weeks following its November 19 launch -- two days after the PS3 launched -- is Sony headed for a huge disappointment? I doubt that, but 2007 will be an interesting time for its CEO, Sir Howard Stringer.