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Trigger Happy
28
million of the consoles worldwide. In 2002, Sony will
expand PlayStation2’s capabilities further to include
broadband internet access so that users will be able to
browse the Web, use email, play games online against
each other, and even download music and featurelength
movies straight onto the machine’s hard drive. While
the hard drive and modem of PlayStation2 are an
optional accessory, Microsoft has cunningly built these
features into its own first videogame console, the Xbox,
which is also a domestic DVD player. Consoles today
can offer more different types of entertainment than
ever before.
Can anything stop this fun-juggernaut? Research
from U.S. analysts Datamonitor suggests that sales of
games consoles and software in Europe and the United
States will generate over $17 billion worth of business
a year by 2003. The conventional media—Hollywood,
music, even books—are scared. Who can blame them?
The shock of the new
Videogames are not going to go away. You can’t
hide under the stairs. Resistance is futile. Any industry
with such a vast amount of money sloshing around in it
is by that token alone worthy of investigation.