How Will the Xbox Affect Gaming?

According to an article published by GameSpot, Sony of Japan has suspicions that the Xbox may have a dramatic impact on the console gaming industry and may even force Sony to fast-track development of the PS3. Sony initially anticipated that Nintendo’s Gamecube would be their major competitor, but Japanese GameCube sales well below expectations have caused Sony to reconsider Microsoft as their biggest competitor. The fact that the Xbox includes a built-in hard drive and Ethernet adapter may necessitate a change in Sony’s marketing and development plans. At the present time Sony is still fully supporting the Playstation 2, forgoing plans for development of handheld competition for the Gameboy Advance, and major financial analysts still predict that neither the GameCube or Xbox will be able to topple Sony’s dominance of the market, but Sony is concerned about pressure to evolve the PS2 when the company is presently still trying to recover its high initial PS2 chip production costs, two years after the PS2’s debut.