While Sony basks in the success of its PlayStation 2, expectations are rising that its successor will be out of the box by 2005 in an different form.
Sony remains tight-lipped about the timing of the next generation's debut, but it is dropping some hints about the product's likely shape - or more accurately, lack of shape.
"We're not thinking about hardware," said Kenichi Fukunaga, spokesman for Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE), the Sony subsidiary that develops and makes the PlayStation.
"The ideal solution would be having an operating system installed in various home appliances that could run game programmes," he said.
Fuelling expectations of a 2005 target date is a microchip project among SCE; Toshiba, Japan's largest chipmaker and co-producer of the PlayStation 2's complex microprocessor; and International Business Machines.
The four-year project, codenamed "cell" and due for completion in spring 2005, aims to create a powerful processor for home electronics with ultra-fast Internet connections that could, for example, transmit high-resolution moving pictures.
PlayStation 2, with more than 33 million machines sold since its launch in March 2000, has dwarfed sales of rival consoles released last year - Microsoft's Xbox and Nintendo's GameCube.
In July, the Wall Street Journalreported Microsoft was considering releasing a new game machine in 2003 or 2004 that would cost about $500 and be able to pause live TV and record programmes onto a hard drive.