The company is expected to sell out its production of 1 million this year. But Sega is now bundling three games with its unit, and sales should reach nearly 1 million this year, Miao says. And so far, retail sales seem to be on track. The PC game market is hot, too. One reason is the rising importance of the Internet.
Many game makers see online gaming as an important part of the industry's future.
That's what TEN is discovering. Going after such die-hard gamers isn't exactly easy pickings. One of the biggest challenges for online gaming companies is a pesky technical problem called ''latency.'' Because the Net works by passing small packets of data through various routes, action games such as Doom can become a little disjointed when Net traffic is heavy and packets tend to get delayed or lost. MPath's Web site is one of only a few that give subscribers with multimedia PCs the ability to talk to other players during a game. Members speak into their PCs' microphones.