LOS ANGELES - Microsoft has promised its toughest battle yet to rival, and world game console king, Sony which has just unveiled its PlayStation 3.
Microsoft, after launching its first Xbox in 2001, one year on the heels of Sony's PlayStation 2, has been playing hard at catching up.
But now, with its new game console Xbox 360, the world's top software maker has clearly taken the offensive.
Presented as the mainstay of a new home multi-media empire, the Xbox 360 is "a platform that no company in the industry can even try to match", said a marketing expert during a conference-show late Monday in Los Angeles.
The boast echoed an impressive show of confidence Sony had put on a few hours earlier. The Japanese company had claimed as much about its own product before thousands of people on the eve of the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), the biggest game show exhibition in the world opening to the public Wednesday in Los Angeles.
"PS3 is truly the system to be placed in the center of the living room around the world," said Sony Computer Entertainment CEO Ken Kutaragi.
He unveiled a prototype of the new game console expected to go on sale in early 2006. Wavier in line and practically identical in size to its predecessor the future Playstation will be available in white, black and silver.
Sony said its PS3 would be 35 times more powerful than PlayStation 2 and twice more than Microsoft's XBox, owing to a super-performing processor.
With some 13,000 games and 191 million sold in 120 countries since its launch in 1994, the PlayStation is for now the most popular game console among video game players.
According to Jupiter Research, the PS2 in 2004 accounted for 43 percent of the US game console market, against 19 percent for the Xbox and 14 percent for Nintendo's GameCube, with the rest going to portable game consoles.
However, Jupiter Research predicts that by 2010, Microsoft will take first place with 38 percent of the game console market, followed by Sony with 32 percent and Nintendo with 22 percent.
In addition, Xbox 360 finally appears to have some teeth with which to bite off a chunk of Sony's Japanese market, which Microsoft totally ignored when it launched its first version in 2001.
Late on Monday, Microsoft announced it was able for the first time to attract Japanese editor Square Enix, producer of "Final Fantasy" role game that sold more than 60 million worldwide.
Hironobu Sakaguchi, who created the game and is adored by role game fans, is developing a similar game for Xbox 360.
To keep abreast of Sony, Microsoft also promised on Monday that its new generation of game consoles will be compatible with its predecessor, so millions of future buyers will not need to throw out their current consoles.
Experts said that despite Sony's experience-based confidence in the field, Microsoft scored some points on Monday because it presented a finished product several months ahead of its rival.
"Sony put on a technical display of something that doesn't exist yet, while Microsoft showed games that worked with people at the controls," said France's RPG magazine head reporter Gerald Mercey.
05/17/2005 10:30 GMT