LeVasseur says Microsoft saw this trend coming and developed two products, the Game Voice and Strategic Commander, to allow gamers to talk to their fellow players over the Internet during a game and to wield more precise control over their favorite strategy and role-playing games, respectively. LeVasseur says, though, that computer gamers who have traditionally played peripheral-intensive joystick and racing wheel games are not dropping the PC for the Sony PlayStation 2 or Sega Dreamcast consoles. There's a really, really big overlap between PC gamers and console gamers. We haven't seen trends indicating that people are migrating from one platform to another. Both are doing quite well.
Retailers say they have noticed little, if any, slowdown in peripheral sales.
That's where the majority of our questions are based, and we sell a lot of system optimizations in the store to really help increase just your basic computer to where it can do those levels of games. That's the hottest question that we've got going right now. It's all about gaming. LeVasseur says that while certain peripherals sell well, they are the exceptions to the trend. It hasn't been around as long, so it has more growth opportunity.