Sony Unveils Pact With Palm, Shows Off New Tech Toys/PS2
LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - Consumer electronics company Sony Corp (NYSE:SNE - news)...
>>...Sony's president and chief executive Nobuyuki Idei gave a keynote address at Comdex, one of the industry's biggest shows, where he talked about Sony's three gateways into the networked society -- the Sony Vaio personal computer family, the set-top box and its new video gaming console, the Playstation2.
''Some call Sony a hardware company, some call it a media company,'' Idei said. ''What we are and what we will be is a broadband entertainment company.''
Sony said that it will be the new Sony Playstation, which will be launched in Japan next March and in the U.S. and Europe in the fall of 2000, that will be the driver for higher speed network access in the home, referred to as broadband.
''We believe it is the Playstation2 and its compelling software which will accelerate the deployment of broadband networks into consumers homes,'' said Kazuo Hirai, the president of Sony Computer Entertainment America. ''We are poised to take this to the next level of entertainment.''
Sony did a demonstration of the new Playstation2, which is in a sleek black box, showing clips from video games where in a car race, the graphics are so high performance that they simulated a visible heat haze from the cars driving around the racetrack. Another game, called Dark Cloud, showed the hair and the clothes of the boy character blowing in the wind.
Sony's Idei also noted that the U.S. is behind Japan and Europe, which have a considerable lead in the deployment of high-speed networks to the home.
He also hinted that Sony may have a challenger to Nintendo Co. Ltd.'s popular Pokemon game characters.
''I hate to mention that Pokemon is very popular in this country,'' Idei said, adding that he thinks the Sony Playstation team will fight back with another character.<<
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