Sony told analysts last week that roughly 80 percent of the Playstation 3s they ship to stores will be of the premuim, 60GB, built-in WiFi, variety with the remaining 20 percent being the core, 20 GB version, Next-Gen is reporting.

Sony reiterated to analysts that while they will have 400,000 units available at launch, they plan to air-freight another 800,000 units to U.S. stores by the end of the year. Sony said they will be able to do this because they expext Blu-Ray laser supplies to improve drastically. Last week, Sony told me that more than three million Cell chips had already been shipped to their manufacturers. IBM said that they continue to produce the chips well within expectations, so this second large shipment sounds very doable.

While 400,000 sounds a bit low for the initial shipment, and it's way lower then they wanted it to be, I think the key to Sony's launch is really going to be how quickly they can reship and what their failure rates will be with the console. Those are the two things that really screwed Microsoft's launch of the 360. Brian Crecente

More on PS3 Shipment Plans [Next-Gen]