Fast-forward about three years, by which time the PlayStation was fully entrenched in the video game community. Sony was riding the success of such blockbuster games as Resident Evil and Final Fantasy VII, and more bestsellers, such as Metal Gear Solid, were soon to come. In short, no one doubted Sony's prominence in the video game industry. In the summer of that year, Ken Kutaragi, now CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment International (SCEI) and also the mastermind behind much of the PlayStation line's hardware, made a little-publicised confirmation: a new Sony video game system was indeed in development. Kutaragi talked about the fact that this new system would bridge the gap between artificial-looking video games and much more realistic imagery, and some of the upcoming PS2 titles bear this statement out. This announcement also revealed that Sony would be creating the hardware for its system itself, rather than farming out development to outside parties as Sega and Nintendo have done in the past. A similar strategy for the PlayStation's hardware has resulted in a system with remarkable longevity - developers have managed to squeeze ever-greater performance out of that ageing system.

Little else was said about the PlayStation2 prior to its official announcement. In February 1999, Kutaragi, representing SCEI, joined Toshiba Microelectronics Corp. engineers in an appearance at the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits convention in San Francisco. Kutaragi and friends gave a talk about a powerful new microprocessor that the two companies had jointly developed, and rumours instantly sprang up that this chip would be the heart of the forthcoming Sony system. The CPU contained 10.5 million transistors, ran at 250MHz (later raised to 300), and included "128-bit multimedia extensions" and an on-chip MPEG2 video decoder. The announcement of this superchip let loose the first hard details about the PS2's hardware, and buzz among industry pundits increased proportionately. All that buzz would come to a head just a month later when the officially named PlayStation2 was finally revealed.The date: early March 1999. The place: Tokyo. SCEI invited journalists from all over the world to attend a conference that radically changed the video game landscape. Its main focus was, of course, the PlayStation2. The massive event showcased every aspect of the system, from hardware design to pricing and launch details. A series of incredibly impressive technical demos sent the audience, and the gaming public, into a frenzy of excitement. Sega's Dreamcast was the only next-generation system already seen at the time and thus was the only competition for the PS2. True to the off-the-shelf nature of its hardware, Dreamcast games looked very similar to 3D-accelerated PC games. The PS2's custom hardware, however, was generating graphical effects that rivalled many games' prerendered CG movies.

The demos shown were, in fact, the focus of the show, and they were more than sufficient for setting the game industry reeling. They depicted a variety of PlayStation hits updated to take advantage of the new hardware. For instance, realistic-looking cars raced around an impressively sunlit track in a Gran Turismo demo. In another demo, Namco's synthetic Ridge Racer mascot Reiko Nagase walked down a polygonal runway, looking every bit as good as she had in her prerendered endeavors. And last, Final Fantasy sweethearts Squall and Rinoa reenacted their ballroom dance scene to the strains of Faye Wong, and the PlayStation2 crunched all the geometric numbers (and dance numbers) in real time. In addition to the game-specific demos, Sony also showed a few general technical demonstrations. One of these showed off features like transparency, reflection, and advanced physics simulation by depicting a sink filled with water and containing various toys (like a rubber ducky). The convincingly realistically flowing water and bobbing toys were quick to impress viewers.Sony showed off more than the technical capabilities of the PlayStation2 at its show - the aesthetics of the system itself were also revealed. Surprisingly, the PS2 was designed to resemble standard home electronics equipment like CD players, VCRs and receivers. This design furthers Sony's attempt to position the PS2 as a general-purpose entertainment device rather than a mere video game console. The system's motorised drive tray, coolly coloured logo and sleek black stylings were a marked departure from the original PlayStation's design. The PS2's ability to stand vertically (like a tower PC) was also a surprising and welcome change.

The PlayStation2 had long been rumoured to use a DVD-ROM drive, and this was confirmed at the show, although it was also stated that some PS2 games would ship on CD. Disc colour coding, a surprisingly effective gimmick used first on the PlayStation's black discs, was also shown: CD games would be blue, and DVD games silver. Interestingly, though the DVD feature was highly touted, the majority of PS2 games released so far have been on CD. Further strengthening the PS2's position as a general home-entertainment platform, it was revealed that the system would also play standard DVD movies, adding a crucial selling point to the system's already impressive list of features.

Speaking of features, the PS2 would have a few more unique ones. The system would contain previously unheard-of levels of connectivity, from USB and FireWire ports to a PC card slot. These high-speed connections would allow for a wide array of peripheral components later in the PS2's life. Adding still more to the system's value, Sony announced that the PlayStation2 would be backwards compatible: gamers would still be able to play their existing PlayStation library of games on the new PS2. Even controllers and memory cards that were made for the original PlayStation could be used with the PS2. The system just kept getting better and better with each new detail.

The March 1999 unveiling of the PlayStation2 certainly got people talking, but it also left a great number of questions unanswered. Release date? Price? Games? Sony would fill these details in over the following months as they became finalised.The PlayStation2 wasn't expected to make an appearance at E3 in 1999, since so little of the system's development had been finished. It did show up in a very incomplete form, though. Sony displayed a large metallic pyramid containing video monitors running the same demos that were shown at the March unveiling. Of course, this wasn't very exciting to show goers, who had seen it all before.

Sony held another press conference in September of 1999 to release more concrete details about the PlayStation 2 and its launch. The system, Sony announced, would launch on March 4th, 2000 in Japan, at a price just under the yen equivalent of $400. It would include a single Dual Shock 2 controller and an 8-megabyte PS2 memory card. The Dual Shock 2, which shared its shape and button layout with the original Dual Shock, was shown to be analogue to its core - even its buttons and directional pad supported variable degrees of pressure. The memory card would be used not only for holding game data but also for storing the DVD driver. Sony planned to use this driver system to facilitate future updates to the PS2.

At the September conference, Sony also addressed the most important facet of the PlayStation2's launch: the games. The PS2's lineup looked amazingly similar to its predecessor's list of six years ago. Aside from the Mah Jongg and anime-based games that accompany all Japanese hardware releases, the A-list titles would once again be provided by Sony and Namco. The latter, in fact, was leading with the two games that made it a powerhouse developer for the original PlayStation. Those games were Tekken Tag Tournament and Ridge Racer V. This would be Tekken's fourth iteration and Ridge Racer's fifth, and though both games had received massive visual upgrades, their core gameplay remained fundamentally unchanged. Sony's most prominent game at the time was Gran Turismo 2000 (later renamed Gran Turismo 3), though that game has yet to ship. The PlayStation2 also exhibited a wealth of potential in its upcoming lineup thanks to other developers who had announced support for the machine. Among them were Capcom (Biohazard/Resident Evil) and Square (Final Fantasy). Needless to say, the PS2's software future looked bright.

After these details had been disclosed, there was little left to do but await the Japanese launch date. Square announced in January three new Final Fantasy titles, two of which were in development for the PlayStation2. Neither amounted to more than a technical demo, though. Sony held a PlayStation Festival in February of 2000 to give the press a hands-on look at nearly finished versions of the software that would be supporting the PS2 at launch. Other tidbits, like screenshots, slipped out occasionally.

And so the big launch day drew closer, and thousands of eager gamers around Japan dreamed of cradling their own PlayStation2 in their arms. Time would tell that no one suspected just how many thousands of those gamers there were.To call the PlayStation2's launch anything but a success would be to severely discredit Sony's development and marketing teams, as well as anyone else directly involved with the system's launch. Japanese gamers are known for lining up outside their favorite Akihabara-region electronics store in anticipation of a new game release, but the demand (and the lines) for the PlayStation2 surpassed all expectations. The system sold approximately one million units in its first weekend of release. These staggering sales figures, as well as the potential of such a powerful and versatile machine, caught the attention of even the mainstream press around the world. Newspapers and television news shows began to run stories about the incredible new device that Sony had unleashed on Japan, and so the hype began to build abroad.

The PlayStation2 didn't launch in Japan without a snag, though. Its most glaring fault was a flaw in the included memory cards that caused saved game data or the DVD driver to be corrupted. Sony immediately stopped shipment of separate memory cards so it could address these issues, but many of the cards that were packed into the PS2 boxes were also afflicted. This problem didn't affect Japanese consumers' desire for the new system, though, as demand remained heavy in the face of short supply.

Interestingly enough, a subsequent poll of PS2 owners revealed that a large number had bought the machine primarily as a DVD player rather than a game console. Sony's bid to capture the potential DVD audience seemed to have worked, if in a somewhat roundabout way.After witnessing the smashing success of the PlayStation2 in Japan, Sony began to focus its energies on the North American market. The first big event in the marketing process came at E3 2000, where Sony had a chance to talk about the PS2's American launch, including price and date details, as well as changes that would occur. The PS2 was set at a price of $299 and was scheduled to launch in the US on October 26th, a date that became etched into the minds of thousands of American gamers.

Two major hardware changes occurred in the Western version of the PS2. First, the PC card slot was removed in favor of a large drive bay that, according to Sony, would eventually house a hard drive. Japanese PS2 units would access the forthcoming hard drive externally through one of the system's data ports, but US and UK gamers would be able to install the drive directly into the PS2. The other change regarded the DVD and system drivers that had previously resided on the 8Mb memory card. Sony moved these drivers to an internal flash memory unit and stated that CD updates to these drivers would still be possible (presumably by flashing this memory with the new data).

E3 was also Sony's forum to show off the PlayStation2's launch software, and so it did. Much of this software met with only lukewarm approval from some members of the gaming press, though. The lack of originality in some of the PS2's titles was decried by an audience tired of playing the same games with new facelifts. Not all of the PS2's lineup was so reviled, though. Konami's Metal Gear Solid 2 was the runaway hit of the entire show, drawing enormous crowds to its ten-minute video presentation. The game, set to release in late 2001, follows the further adventures of Solid Snake and features remarkably realistic graphics and environment simulation. Konami's Zone of the Enders and Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee by Oddworld Inhabitants also drew praise.Since E3, Sony has been fairly reserved in its distribution of new PS2 info. The exact list of launch games has remained in flux, and the confirmed games may or may not have undergone changes since their Japanese releases. Namco's Tekken Tag Tournament, for instance, has received graphical enhancements thanks to the extra time Namco has had to address anti-aliasing issues.

The PlayStation2 has hit the European retail shelves and it's already one of the most talked-about products in video game history. The system has an incredible amount of potential in its ability to create new gaming experiences as its game software line-up advance in design and complexity, and it is also all important for Sony: these days, the PlayStation as a product line accounts for a large portion of the company's overall revenue. Sony has a lot riding on the PS2's success, and we can be sure that Sony will be backing the system to the fullest extent of its ability in the weeks, months and years ahead.

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