Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy manual Shock of the new

Trigger Happy

million of the consoles worldwide. In 2002, Sony will expand PlayStation2’s capabilities further to include broadband internet access so that users will be able to browse the Web, use email, play games online against each other, and even download music and featurelength movies straight onto the machine’s hard drive. While the hard drive and modem of PlayStation2 are an optional accessory, Microsoft has cunningly built these features into its own first videogame console, the Xbox, which is also a domestic DVD player. Consoles today can offer more different types of entertainment than ever before.

Can anything stop this fun-juggernaut? Research from U.S. analysts Datamonitor suggests that sales of games consoles and software in Europe and the United States will generate over $17 billion worth of business a year by 2003. The conventional media—Hollywood, music, even books—are scared. Who can blame them?

The shock of the new

Videogames are not going to go away. You can’t hide under the stairs. Resistance is futile. Any industry with such a vast amount of money sloshing around in it is by that token alone worthy of investigation.

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