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World Championships Planned for Consoles, Classics, Pinball and PC Gamers

The Mall of America - America's largest enclosed shopping mall - has scheduled the dates for the 3rd Annual Twin Galaxies Video Game Festival. Taking up the entire weekend of July 18-20, 2003, the event plans four major gaming world championships in addition to a classics arcade and a midway of console and PC games open to the public on free play.

With thousands of dollars promised in prizes for contest winners, Twin Galaxies has scheduled these four championships: the 3rd Annual Console Video Game World Championship, the 1st Annual Classic Video Game World Championship, the 1st Annual Mall Pinball World Championship and the 1st Annual PC Games World Championship.

Just like last year, thousnds of dollars in prize monies will be split among the finalists in each championship and the winners will be published in a forthcoming edition of Twin Galaxies' Official Video Game & Pinball Book of World Records.

Though sponsors and contest games are still be selecting for the 2003 event, you can learn more about this annual event by reading last year's news release:

News source: Twin Galaxies

Microsoft is hoping to parlay its experience running networks and large online services, such as its free Hotmail e-mail service, into success with Xbox Live. The company is already using technology derived from its Passport online sign-in service to help people log into Xbox Live. Its approach to online gaming is similar to the proprietary strategy it pursues in many of its core businesses: The company sells its software with components that work well together but don't necessarily operate with competitors' programs.

Microsoft has set a high bar as it readies to do battle with Sony and Nintendo. To use Xbox Live, gamers must have an expensive, high-speed "broadband" Internet connection, instead of merely a dial-up connection, and also must buy a $50 set-up kit in addition to the standard Xbox console and games. The kit includes a headset used to talk to other players and a year's subscription to Microsoft's gaming network, which is accessible only by using the Xbox connected to a TV.

Mr. Allard says the focus on broadband and a proprietary network give Microsoft more flexibility to add features, such as, potentially, speech-recognition technology or an instant-messaging function to chat with other players. Microsoft may eventually allow online players to download music and videos from the Web, he says.

Sony and Nintendo, in contrast, each require the purchase of a separate modem, priced under $40, to connect their machines to high-speed or dial-up Internet lines; neither has a sign-up fee. Sony is banking on the wide lead the PS2 has over the Xbox and GameCube. Sony has sold more than twice as many PS2 machines in the U.S. as Microsoft and Nintendo combined, according to industry analysts.

In touting its data center, Microsoft is clearly hoping to build excitement among die-hard gamers long before online gaming goes mainstream. Most game makers concur it will be years before they develop sophisticated online games, in part because today's way of distributing games, via discs, is so profitable.

Microsoft has invested heavily in its online-gaming push, opening the Tukwila data center and three others, in downtown Seattle, London and Tokyo. The Xbox group is funding some outside companies that are creating games for Xbox Live. The company has said it expects to invest $2 billion over the next five years on Xbox, including its online service. The network should give Microsoft a leg up over Sony if Sony doesn't build its own network soon, says Robbie Bach, head of the Xbox business. "They can invest now or they can invest later," he says. "But if they invest later, they'll be behind."

For Sony, however, networks aren't the only strategy for attracting online gamers. When Sony put the finishing touches on the PlayStation 2 in the late 1990s, it figured that networks wouldn't be fast enough to run the graphics-intensive games that gamers demanded, Sony executives say. But the company is bringing over well-known brands from the offline world to attract gamers to the online domain. In addition to Electronic Arts Inc.'s Madden NFL football title, Sony is also offering online versions of Twisted Metal: Black, its popular vehicle-combat game, and Final Fantasy, a leading game from Square Co. None of those games can be played online on the Xbox.

Nintendo, in contrast, is entering the online derby with caution. "In the short term [online gaming] creates some buzz and excitement," says Peter MacDougall, executive vice president at Nintendo's U.S. unit, also in Redmond. Yet, in a tough economy, "discretionary items like online gaming might be the first one to go," he says.