Yo_BU$$ER$............
RE:SONY PlayStationII
biz.yahoo.com
Friday February 18, 5:26 am Eastern Time
Sony Web site mobbed as PlayStation fever strikes
By Yuko Inoue
MAKUHARI, Japan, Feb 18 (Reuters) - PlayStation fever struck again.
Sony Corp was forced to briefly shut down its Web site early
on Friday after receiving 100,000 hits in just a minute when sales of the new version of the popular video game went online.
The new 128-bit PlayStation2 player -- the successor to the world's most popular game system that has sold 70 million units in the past five years -- is expected to open a new era in the gaming world when it goes on sale on March 4.
Sony halted its swamped Web server just after midnight on Thursday only moments after Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) started taking advance online orders for the console.
''We received far more accesses than we had imagined on the Web,'' SCE president Ken Kutaragi told crowds of people gathered on the first day of the ''PlayStation Festival'' in Makuhari, near Tokyo.
Even after the failure, the site still received an average 400,000 to 500,000 hits per minute, he added.
The flurry of activity in cyberspace reflects a ''PlayStation fever'' which began taking shape in Japan last weekend when Tsutaya, a video and music CD shop, was flooded by 10,000 advanced applications for the game player in just two days.
Those bids compared with the company's planned sales of just 1,000 units to its on-line customers.
GAME MAKERS CONFIDENT OF SUCCESS
Software developers, who displayed their products at the festival, also were confident that the machine would swell Japan's huge video game market, worth one trillion yen ($9.03 billion) a year.
''Sony's (PlayStation) will come to the top,'' said James Reed, international product manager at software developer JALECO. ''Graphics, ability to perform -- everything is better than the others.''
Sony's chief rivals in the video game industry are Nintendo Co Ltd and Sega Enterprises Ltd .
Videogame magazine publisher Mediaworks said nearly 90 percent of its readers voted for the PlayStation2 as their preferred choice in a questionnaire, while only five percent chose Sega's Dreamcast.
''Unless Nintendo comes up with really unique features, the PlayStation will just swell the market,'' said Mediaworks' director Kozo Takahashi.
Nintendo plans to launch its own next-generation console, code-named Dolphin, later this year.
For small video game designers, who have to place their bets long before the market decides the winner, the choice of which hardware platform will emerge most popular is often a make-or-break gamble.
''To be honest, in this rapidly changing era of the Internet, what will happen three years ahead is totally unpredictable. It's a gamble. But we decided to go with Sony,'' said Kaz Ichigaya, executive director at game software designers Artdink Corp.
A total of 28 game software titles were unveiled on Friday ahead of the launch.
Software maker Square Co Ltd announced it had agreed with Disney Interactive Inc, a unit of Walt Disney Co (NYSE:DIS - news), to jointly develop software for the Playstation2 console.
''We plan to develop a new game using Disney charactors, aiming to expand our customer base into the Disney fans,'' Square President Tomoyuki Takechi told news conference. He said they plan to develop games with some on-line functionality.
($1=110.79 Yen)
Like Captain Kirk of the Starship Enterprise says:
"This is going to be BIG....REALLY BIG"
Norman$ |
