With the amount of attention the new Sony Playstation 2 has been receiving for most of this year, you could be forgiven for thinking it has been on sale for months. In fact, the successor to the best-selling games console ever goes on sale in Britain tomorrow, more than nine months after its launch in Japan.
But unless you got your reservation in early, don't expect to lay your hands on one this side of Christmas. Because of massive demand in Japan and the US, and component droughts, Sony has rationed the number on sale. Only around 165,000 machines will be available initially, down from an original estimate of 200,000. Some people who pre-booked their machines will not get them before Christmas, says Sony.
Its PR machine is deftly spinning, pointing out that the number of consoles going into homes is higher than for the original PlayStation. But the circumstances are different: there has never been a games machine so eagerly awaited. One million were sold in its first weekend in Japan.
Why? It helps being the successor to the PlayStation 1, which has snatched 60% of the world's games console market. It also helps that its technical specification eclipses anything else on the market. Sega's Dreamcast - which has seen a rise in sales because of Sony's supply problems - runs on a chip with a speed of 200MHz. It can draw 3 million polygons per second, this being a key indicator of a console's power, and consequently the quality of its graphics.
The PlayStation 2 has a 300Mhz chip. But the biggest difference is in the number of polygons drawn in a second: a cool 75 million. So it can display a richer variety of colours, and smoother graphics. It can also play DVDs, and is expected to lie at the centre of any Sony attempts to create home networks of electronic equipment.
But some gamers have criticised the quality of the first selection of PS2 games. Programmers are struggling with the complexities of producing good-looking graphics for it. At the heart of the problems is its "anti-aliasing" capabilities which are supposed to smooth out graphics before they are displayed. On some titles, like Ridge Racer V from Namco, this feature has not worked well - particularly embarrassing for a console being sold on the power of its graphics.
Sony is keen to play down these problems as early glitches, and promises supplies will flow more freely in the New Year. They may need to: Sony's launch is only the opening salvo in a fierce four-way battle for console supremacy.
Already established is Sega's Dreamcast. There is also a new machine from gaming veteran Nintendo, the GameCube - due next year. And Microsoft is getting ready to enter the fray.
Its Xbox, due to appear in the US towards the end of next year, will have a 733 MHz chip able to draw a staggering 150 million polygons a second. And it should launch with a healthy software library; Microsoft is making great efforts to make it simpler to write for.
This will be the last Christmas where Sony has all the hype to itself.
