Sony has admitted it has yet to begin manufacturing its PlayStation 3 console even though the machine is due to go on sale in three months. Speaking to Gamespot, an American website, Sony Computer Entertainment America president Kaz Hirai said: "We haven't started manufacturing yet."

The company is currently "preparing... to get manufacturing going" he added.

However, the company said that it plans to have 4 million of the machines ready for the key Christmas period.

The news follows the recall last week of more than 4 million Sony batteries that were supplied with Dell laptops.

In April, Sony sounded a warning over costs associated with the PS3, which is likely to be pitted against much cheaper competitors from Microsoft and Nintendo.

Takao Yuhara, senior vice-president at Sony, said: "We believe that we can lower costs dramatically [on the PS3] through chip shrinkage and by cutting the number of parts but there is no way to avoid high costs in the first year."

Together with continuing restructuring costs linked to 10,000 job cuts and several factory closures, the PS3 launch is expected to cut Sony profits almost in half this year.