Back in September Sony suggested shipment figures at 400,000 and 100,000 for the US and Japan respectively. Now a report from a Japanese newspaper, Nikkei Keizai Shimbun, states that Sony has been forced to reduce the Japanese allocation by a further 20 per cent, just 11 days before launch.

To put the 80,000 units in perspective, Sony shipped around 900,000 consoles in Japan, and 400,000 in the US, for the launch of the PS2.

Basically they cant even make the small amount of ps3s they said they would in the first place, even less and they dont want half of them going abroad otherwise there will be like 1 console for every 500 miles squared in Japan, lol and one per state in the US.
Good going Sony

Role on the hardware problems and the insane returns system and poor support for the suckers that buy one of these first batches.

I can see the worst stability issues with a first batch of machines for any console and you got to be bad to be the Saturn build quality.

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=35445