Tokyo stocks rise after U.S. gains, Sony falls

TOKYO, Mar 15 (Reuters) The Nikkei average rose 0.54 percent on Wednesday, led by brokers such as Nomura Holdings Inc. after a gain in U.S. stocks brightened prospects for the Japanese market.

Sony Corp. fell after the Nihon Keizai business daily said the company would delay the release of its new PlayStation 3 video game console until early November.

Takahiko Murai, general manager of equities at Nozomi Securities, said investors picked up blue-chip companies such as Nomura due to increasing chances of higher interest rates.

The Bank of Japan last week scrapped its five-year super-easy monetary policy, marking the possible start of a tightening cycle.

''When lending rates are expected to rise, investors usually prefer large-cap stocks to small-cap ones because the bigger a company is the more cash flow it has,'' Murai said.

The Nikkei was up 86.92 points at 16,325.28 as of 0104 GMT.

It fell 123 points on Tuesday a day after hitting a one-month closing high.

The broader TOPIX index was up 0.23 percent at 1,669.65.

Nomura, Japan's biggest brokerage, rose 3 percent to 2,420 yen, helping send the brokerage sector subindex ISECU.up 1.6 percent.

A jump in oil prices aided some resource-related stocks, with Teikoku Oil Co. Ltd. rising 1.3 percent to 1,509 yen.

Shares in Sony lost 1.6 percent to 5,480 yen.

Sony will delay the PlayStation 3 release until early November because development of some of the technology is behind schedule, the Nihon Keizai and other Japanese newspapers said on Wednesday.

Sony, maker of the market-leading PlayStation 2 console, announced the PS3 last May and said it would be released this spring. It will hold a briefing on the PlayStation business at 3 p.m. (0600 GMT).

Reuters SK VP0730