Nintendo of Europe and Australia crack open the champagne.

In a move that is sure to boost fortunes for the Wii, and of course the Xbox 360, Sony this morning announced that the launch of the Playstation 3 in PAL territories (that's Europe, Australasia, Russia, Africa and the Middle East) has been pushed back to March 2007. The Japanese and US launches will go ahead as scheduled in November, but in Europe and elsewhere Nintendo will not have Sony's uber-console for the Wii to worry about. And come Christmas there will be one less console to compete with for those spots under the tree.

Sony have also halved the forecast of how many PS3 consoles will ship this year, with now just two million units shipped worldwide before the end of December.

Sony blamed the push-back on problems producing the blue laser diode in the PS3's Blu-Ray drives. Quite simply, there aren't enough consoles to go around, and so somewhere has to take the hit. While not necessarily Nintendo news, we thought this would be of interest to Nintendo fans nonetheless. Have fun gloating.