Soccer shootout
Fergie will soon be tackling Vialli in the video games market, as well as in the dugouts in the Premiership. 3DO Europe has announced that Sir Alex has signed up to front Alex Ferguson's Player Manager 2001, previously called Player Manager 2001. Vialli's offering is Gianluca Vialli's Premiership Manager, written by Wayward XS in Italy. Fergie's game will appear on the Sony PlayStation in November and on the PS2 next year. Midas Interactive will publish Vialli's game for Windows 95/98 on November 11.
The two giants follow a long line of superstar man agers fronting football management games, including Graham Souness, Graham Taylor, Brian Clough and Kevin Keegan.
PSone
Sony plans to launch its semi-portable mains-powered PSone games console in the UK on September 29, the fifth anniversary of the launch of the PlayStation. But whereas the PSX, as it is known, cost £299.99, the PSone is expected to arrive at £79.99. Meanwhile, the PS2 is still scheduled for November 24 at the original PlayStation price.
Online battle
Two games giants, America's Electronic Arts and France's Ubi Soft, unveiled online gaming systems at the weekend. EA opened the beta test version of EA.com in the US, with the "British English" and European versions due "late 2001 or early 2002". Ubi Soft's UK games portal went live at www.GameLoft.co.uk, with 23-year-old Kornelia Takacs, women's world Quake III champion, flying in from Los Angeles to frag the first users. GameLoft is based in Paris but operates in 11 countries, and has $50 million in backing from the Canadian government.
DC down
Tomorrow, Sega officially cuts the UK price of the Dreamcast games console to £149.99, though many retailers have long since dropped the unofficial price. In the US, Sega is cutting the price to the traditional industry equivalent, $149.99.
Advance halt
The Game Boy Advance takes handheld gaming to a new level, with colourful high-speed action and Dolby sound driven by a 16.75MHz 32-bit ARM processor. Unfortunately, British gamers will not be allowed to buy this little "SNES on steroids" until next year. However, the ancient Game Boy Color may get some competition from Bandai, the Japanese toy giant behind Power Rangers. Bandai has just shown off a faster, cheaper, colour version of its WonderSwan handheld, which will sell for less than £50 in Japan. WonderSwans can be connected to mobile phones via a WonderGate interface for multiplayer gaming, and in future will also link to Sony's PlayStation 2.
Lookalikes, step forward
FirstLook.com and Square are holding a competition to find blue-eyed blondes. The point is that they are supposed to look like Aya Brea, the pistol-packing heroine of Squaresoft's Parasite Eve games. Aya has never made it into the Lara Croft or even Joanna Dark league, but a real life version would be very big in Japan. The top five entrants are invited to the Parasite Eve 2 premiere party in Hollywood. See www.firstlook.com/ParasiteEve.
