Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy Wall Street Journal, April 28

Trigger Happy

renting movies. Total videogame software and hardware sales in the United States reached $8.9 billion, versus $7.3 billion for movie box-office receipts;2 $6.6 billion of the videogame receipts were from software sales, retail and online. How did this strange invasion happen? How did this stealthy virus insinuate itself into so many homes?

Well, one company has done more than any other over the last six years to stake out videogames’ huge place in adult popular culture: Sony, manufacturers of the PlayStation, the unassuming gray box that reinvigorated my own interest and that of so many others. The last time they counted, Sony had sold five million PlayStations in the UK alone. “The focus for the brand,” explains Guy Pearce, Sony’s UK PR manager, “is eighteen to twenty-five. That’s the age group we aim at, and always have done.” One in every four U.S. households owns a PlayStation.

Sony’s initial stroke of marketing brilliance was to release an early game, 1995’s WipEout, with a thumping techno soundtrack featuring well-known electronic acts of the caliber of Orbital, Leftfield and the Chemical Brothers. The success of this product had

_________________

2 Wall Street Journal, April 28, 2000.

20