SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Sony Corp. will put 1 million PSP portable video game players on North American retail shelves for its March 24 launch, the company said on Tuesday, a figure double what some analysts had expected.

Sony Computer Entertainment of America had previously said 1 million PSPs would be manufactured for North America by March 31, but it acknowledged many of those units would be spread around the supply chain, from factories to distribution to warehouses.

The PSP launched in Japan last December and remains in extremely limited supply there, having shipped nearly 1.2 million units to date. Sony maintained its forecast for shipping 3 million PSPs worldwide by the end of its fiscal year in March.

A spokesman for SCEA, Sony's video game business in the United States, could not immediately say exactly what Sony was doing to meet increased demand. Last year, when its PlayStation 2 console was in short supply, Sony resorted to shipping the units to the United States from China via air freight, a costly option that cuts into margins.

The PSP will retail for $249 at launch in a bundle with a number of accessories and the movie "Spider-Man 2" on UMD, a new disc format developed specifically for the PSP.

"We believe that this device will be hot, will be in demand, in short supply, and generate interest in overall handheld gaming," American Technology Research analyst P.J. McNealy said in a note.

The PSP is Sony's first major venture into handheld video gaming, a market dominated since 1989 by Nintendo Co. Ltd. and its Game Boy line.

Copyright © 2005 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in PC Magazine.