We are about six months from launch, and debugging should be done, prototypes and dev kits should flow like water, and all the tame magazines should already have one. The situation is rather different though, they are nowhere, and there are two related reasons behind this.

The first is size. People tell us that the current PS3s are about 50% too large to fit in the sleek but empty boxes they have been showing off. This is a problem, but a solvable one, electronics always get smaller. Time solves all, and there is still time, just not much.

More troubling to me is that Sony is still bidding on components for the boxes. This means the development is far from final, and it will be debugging up to, and in a Microsoft overheating manner, past the last minute. Not a good sign.