On shelves before Christmas?

According to sources leaked to online game site MCV, Sony is pushing for a European NGP release by November 2011, following an earlier promise by Sony boss Kazuo Hirai that the NGP would hit shelves somewhere in the world by the year's end.

MCV says that third-party licensees claim that Sony has set “development deadlines” for software in order to “ensure key Western releases are finished before the end of the summer for deployment in the autumn.” Some of these “online leaks” (as MCV puts it) go as far as to claim an actual date for release: 11/11/11.

SCEA head Jack Tretton earlier stated to Engadget that the company hopes to release the NGP in “at least one territory by the end of holiday 2011,” but also warns that “it’s very difficult to have the quantities to be able to launch on a worldwide basis on the same date.”

[source ngportable.com]