Introduction Fueled by a strategic game of supply and demand, Sony’s eagerly anticipated Playstation 2 became the latest "must have" item for consumers this past holiday season. Sony smashed sales records, rapidly selling their first batch of systems in a matter of days. Store shelves have remained essentially void of Playstation 2’s through March 2001. Sony claimed that they could not keep up with the demand for the system, but many people in the gaming industry feel that this was not really the case. By releasing only a relatively small number of the machines, Sony pulled a PR stunt that was more powerful than any ad campaign could have ever been. Holiday shoppers who had to have the hottest gaming system on the market were paying as much as $2,000 for the Playstation 2 on eBay.com. This astronomical figure is nearly seven times the $299 that the system currently sells for in stores. Now ...

Introduction Some of you may be a bit surprised to see a review of a video gaming system here in the pages of Audio Revolution. Home video game systems can be a significant part of home entertainment and are relatively inexpensive and easy to add to your home theater. The Sega Dreamcast is the current king of the hill and will not face any serious competition until Sony’s second generation Playstation is out (reportedly later this year). The Dreamcast is a technical powerhouse with many new and innovative features. The Dreamcast has a 200 mhz, 128-bit CPU. Coupled with the unit’s NEC VR chip set, this allows intricate three-dimensional graphics to be drawn quickly and smoothly. Most other console games have either 32- or 64-bit processing. The Dreamcast’s 128-bit processor allows processing of data in groups two to four times larger in size. The result is faster and smoother gaming. For audio processing, Sega went to Yamaha. Yamaha ...