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Recently in Salon Technology

Professor cyborg
If we want to stop machines from taking over, we better start becoming more like them.
By Janelle Brown
[10/20/99]

Attack on the Net
In the midst of dot-com mania, one radio ad campaign takes the offensive against online commerce.
By Andrew Leonard
[10/19/99]

Technology: View from the top
Stoking the Net's growth
Industry veteran Ellen Hancock talks about Windows NT, glass ceilings -- and how her company, Exodus, keeps its vast server farms humming.
By Julie Polito
[10/18/99]

The Hollywoodization of venture capital
The business of funding tech companies has gone gaga for brand names and boffo deals. "Visionaries," though, may be out of luck.
By Mark Gimein
[10/15/99]

Books
The Red Hat diaries
Are Linux coders and Linux companies on different paths? A slapdash new book and a recent flurry of corporate maneuvers suggest just that.
By Andrew Leonard
[10/14/99]

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In the next year and a half, no fewer than four big companies -- Sony, Sega, Nintendo and Microsoft -- are planning the release of (or have already launched) "next-generation" systems fantastically more powerful than the groundbreaking Sony Playstation, boasting graphic images that approach photorealism. But conventional wisdom says that at most only two systems can coexist at any one time. Gamers flock to the console with the most and best games; game developers want to produce games for the system with the largest base of customers. More games means more customers means more games -- a virtuous cycle, if you're winning, a fatal one if you're losing the market-share war.

In the early '90s, Sega's Genesis and Nintendo's SNES shared the market after crushing the Atari Jaguar; in 1996, Sony's Playstation blew away the 3DO and Sega Saturn, relegating the Nintendo64 to also-ran status. The console market has always had either a single big winner or two competing systems crowding out the others. But now there are four pegs and only two holes; some of these forthcoming systems will die.

But who? Sega is back -- it launched its comeback try on Sept. 9 in the United States with the 128-bit Dreamcast console. In March, Sony will release its Playstation 2 in Japan, with a U.S. launch targeted for next fall. Nintendo claims its next-generation console, code-named Dolphin, will appear in the States next winter. And the real wild-card, Microsoft's mysterious X-Box, may also appear in fall 2000.

The elements of victory are straightforward -- technology, price, game availability and speed to market. But the stakes are greater than mere console market share. For at least two combatants -- Sony and Microsoft -- the ultimate goal is not just to grab your gaming hardware dollars, but to control the very center of your entire electronic life.

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