Games consoles are getting more powerful; PCs are getting cheaper. What could be more natural than a games console built using cheap PC parts?
That's what Microsoft is proposing with the X-Box, which will do battle with the latest generation of games consoles including the Sony PlayStation 2, Sega Dreamcast and forthcoming Nintendo Dolphin.
Personal computers already have about a third of the games market, and many of the best games: Championship Manager, Civilization, DOOM, Half-Life, The Sims, Quake etc.
However, PCs are expensive - around UKP1,000 for a hot box - and relatively hard to use. Games consoles are much easier to use and they cost a lot less, with prices ranging from about UKP70 to UKP300.
The X-Box has the power of a PC, and will be able to run the most advanced PC-style games. However, its power is packaged to make it as easy to use as a console, and it will have a comparable price.
But the console design also involves making sacrifices. The X-Box will not be able to provide the flexibility, adaptability and upgradeability that makes PCs so useful. Also, the X-Box that ships before Christmas next year will have to be functionally identical to the one that ships in five years time, while the PC design will have gone through another five iterations by then.
Microsoft says it does not see any conflict between the two types of device, and J Allard, general manager of the X-Box platform, says about three-quarters of PC gamers also own a games console. "Sometimes they want to play on their PC and sometimes they want to play on the big TV in the lounge with their chums and a table full of pizza. It's a social thing."
The console's lack of upgradeability leads to breaks in the continuity of the games console market. So far, each new generation of technology has been dominated by a different supplier. First it was Atari, then Nintendo, Sega and, most recently, Sony.
Sony hopes to be the first company to dominate successive generations of hardware with the PlayStation and PlayStation 2. Microsoft plans to stop it.
