The original PlayStation was simply a games console. However, Sony has long harboured higher ambitions for the PS2. In a speech at the Comdex computer trade show last year, Sony Corporation's president, Nobuyuki Idei, said the company's ambitions went far beyond gaming.

Idei presented the PS2 as a device which could be expanded to include "music, motion pictures and new forms of entertainment not yet developed".

The PS2 could be part of a network of Sony devices. To begin with, it will play games (supplied by Sony and others), audio CDs (Sony owns CBS) and movies on DVD (Sony owns Columbia Pictures). It could also be connected to a Sony television set, to a Sony hi-fi, and, through its built in i.Link port, perhaps to a Sony digital still or video camera.

There is also the prospect of connecting a PS2 to the internet, like a Sega Dreamcast games console, but this is not part of the system Sony is shipping tomorrow.

Sony does have a grand design for connecting equipment: a networking system called HAVi (Home Audio Video Interoperability). The company has a huge mish-mash of electronics products and HAVi can tie them together.

But the battle may be harder than expected, and roughly twice as many PCs will be sold this year as Sony PlayStations have been sold in the past five years. PCs have also been networked devices for almost two decades, with wireless networks becoming important during the past decade.

With Wi-Fi standard wireless networks already connecting home PCs, and Bluetooth (short range wireless) PC Cards starting to arrive, being locked out of the living room may not be to the PC's disadvantage. And Sony's own desktop and notebook PC salesmen are not going to pass up this profitable market.

There is the risk that the idea that the PS2 is just a Trojan horse for Sony's home networking system idea may confuse the PS2 market. In fact, both Nintendo and Microsoft have spent the past six months hammering home the fact that their next-generation consoles, the Gamecube and the Xbox, are being designed solely to deliver great games.

It remains to be seen whether there is a market for a system that tries span both the games and the home network market, especially if it fails to do any of them sufficiently well.