It'll also play all those games in the PlayStation back catalogue, so you'll still be able to have fun with Spyro , Crash and Lara . And you'll be able to plug in extra devices, like a floppy disk drive, if you want. If you're a kid, you'll know all this already. If you're a parent, then prepare to hear the aforementioned litany, in wheedling tones, at weekly intervals right up until, oooh, December 24 . Amid all the synergy and convergence and multimedia and general technology incest , no one seems sure if consoles should concentrate on traditional quickfire thrills, more serious PC-style gaming or the internet.
Consoles continue to march forward, with processors getting ever more powerful.
And the heavyweights biding their time to challenge PlayStation 2, watching its initial technical hitches carefully, each have their own unique particular take on the identity problem. Microsoft's X-Box is gearing up for launch late next year and features extremely beefy hardware indeed. The idea is that it will cream off the best features of PC gaming, make them more accessible and blitzkrieg the market. Oh, and it does the internet and DVDs as well. The idea is that it will be compatible with the Game Boy Advance , allowing for the diddy gadget interbreeding of which the Japanese seem so fond.