Sony launches plan for world domination

If the marketing campaign of the first generation PlayStation encouraged people to live a second alternative life, then judging by the hysteria provoked by the imminent release of PlayStation II it seems to have succeeded.

The new console represents a gamble for Sony, with development costs alone believed to be around $500 million (#520 million).

The company also invested around £600 million (#762 million) in two plants to make the central processing unit of the console called the "emotion engine".

However, the company has sold 980,000 units on the first three days in Japan, approximately 10 times higher than the number of original PlayStations sold during its three-day launch, five years ago. Around 120,000 units of the new console were sold via PlayStation.com (Japan).

The new PlayStation (expected to retail in the Republic for around £300) will appeal to those who would not normally be interested in games or game consoles. This is because the machine will feature a DVD player able to play both movies and music.

It also allows you to connect the console to digital and video cameras, VCRs and home networking systems.

Mr Matthew Lloyd a designer with Funcom, a games company based in Dublin, said that although Sega's Dreamcast was a good machine with good quality games, PlayStation II would be much faster with better graphics and playability.

He said the console's design and jet black colour had caught people's imagination. Given the demand for the product, he had no doubt that Sony would be the first company to dominate two generations of game consoles.

Following Japan, the Republic has the world's highest penetration of PlayStations. There are more than 500,000 units in Irish homes, and it is expected that the new version will be equally popular. PlayStation's sales are a key part of Sony's profits, accounting for 38 per cent of earnings last year. However, history may be against the Japanese giant. No company has ever succeeded in dominating two generations of games consoles.

Atari began the electronic arcade games boom in the late 1970s, but was surpassed by Nintendo in the early 1980s, which was in turn disenfranchised by Sega in the late 1990s with Sonic the Hedgehog.

Sony entered the market in 1994-95 with PlayStation and took over where its predecessors had left off.

"It is a high-risk market," says PlayStation Ireland's marketing manager, Ms Alison Duffy. "Just because the first PlayStation did well, it is in no way a foregone conclusion that PlayStation II will do the same. There are no guarantees."

PlayStation II has been received with almost unanimously rave reviews by the gaming industry, with its graphics claimed to be of movie quality. Its use of film animation techniques is reportedly able to convey "real" effects such as reflections, smoke, dust and fire.

The original PlayStation has sold 70 million units worldwide. In Japan demand was so strong that police had to be called to disperse and control the crowds queuing to buy the new model. This suggests Sony may be able to break the normal market cycle.

PlayStation has taken gaming out of the bedroom, according to Mr Mick Finucane, managing director of Gamesworld. He said the new console would be closest of any products to date to being that one entertainment box which every family would have under the TV.

"The new 128-bit, DVD compatible console will be the state-of-the-art console and its launch in late September will have a seriously detrimental impact on sales of Sega's Dreamcast," he said.

Mr Finucane said the quality of PlayStation II games would be much higher because of the machine's processing power.

Some analysts believe PlayStation II could effectively put the nail in the coffin of Sega and its Dreamcast console, which came out last year.

The strength of any console, though, seems to lie in the quality and range of games or software available for it.

While software developers often wait until a console sells a certain amount before producing games for it, the PlayStation II boasted a large range of games before it was launched. This has to be seen as a vote of confidence in the console.

Unlike the PC market, the real money in the games console market is to be made on software sold to the consumer after the purchase of the console, which is often sold at a very low profit. Sales of console games in the US and Europe were worth $6.4 billion last year.

PlayStation II will offer one thing that previous games consoles never had, backward compatibility, which will allow all but a few existing PlayStation games to be played on the new machine.

While its supporters point to the processor which is more powerful than the latest fastest Pentium chip and a graphics chip more powerful than the fastest workstation you can buy, it will face competition in the very near future.

Software giant Microsoft is expected to throw its considerable weight into the market by bringing out an interactive console called X-box while Nintendo is to launch Dolphin early next year.

Although PlayStation II will allow Internet access, Sony has decided not to supply modems with the console citing the pace of technological change. People will be able to buy the modem of their choice at an additional cost - but previous experience has shown that sales of add ons for computer consoles are extremely low.

One of Dreamcast's main selling points was that it could interact with the Internet, but according to industry sources there were problems in Ireland with the supply of modems which in turn affected sales.

Gaming now seems to have attained the status of a lifestyle choice in some cases and the impact is not confined to easily influenced teenagers and children that have contracted the PlayStation bug.

Both an older generation and a new generation of twenty-somethings seem equally attracted and gaming is now being regarded by some as an acceptable leisure activity.

Whether it can compete with the six billion players online which Sega claims to have with its new Dreamcast is another issue.

If the PlayStation II does live up to the hype, Sony should be laughing all the way to the bank.