BEIJING, March 23 -- Sony Computer Entertainment confirmed a November release of the PlayStation 3 and said the company is also committed to a simultaneous worldwide launch of the PS3 in Japan, the rest of Asia, North America, Europe and Australia.

    Phil Harrison, president of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios, Wednesday told an audience in San Jose, California that Sony will produce about a million PS3s per month and capacity will ramp up quickly.

    Like Microsoft's Xbox Live, the PS3 will allow game players to compete against each other, assemble friends lists and chat using text, audio and video.

    The question Sony will have to face until November, and for at least a year afterward, is whether the one year headstart Microsoft got with its launch of the Xbox 360 console will be too much for Sony to overcome.

    The Japanese electronics giant says no, and that it measures its console successes or failures in 10-year life cycles -- and therefore it has plenty of time to catch up.

    "It doesn't put us at a competitive disadvantage at all," Harrison told a group of journalists. "Throughout our history, we have never been the first console (of each generation) to launch."

    Indeed, Sony has become the market leader with PlayStation 2 sales of more than 100 million units and sales of more than a billion games, Harrison said.

    Still, by the end of November, Microsoft will likely have sold 10 million Xbox 360s worldwide compared to about 1.5 million PlayStation 3s, said P.J. McNealy, a research principal at American Technology Research.

    Meanwhile, Harrison confirmed that a redesigned PS3 controller would be unveiled at E3, the gaming industry trade show, in May. Enditem

    (Agencies)