Let the games begin.
Video game enthusiasts are lined up outside stores across Southern California today hoping to buy Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 3 -- a hotly anticipated machine that kicks off a three-way race for dominance in the $30-billion games business.
Demand for PlayStation 3 will far outstrip supply when the console, priced from $499 to $599, goes on sale at 12:01 a.m. Friday. Sony shipped only 400,000 units to the United States; an allotment of 100,000 sold out in one day when the PS3 debuted in Japan last week.
Success is crucial for Sony, the beleaguered Japanese electronics and entertainment giant that is trying to defend its top spot in gaming against rivals Microsoft Corp. and Nintendo Co. For Sony and Microsoft, game machines offer a toehold into the living room as the two vie to control Internet delivery of movies and music.
"The consoles themselves have enough horsepower to handle strong, media-centric content. Broadband deployment is rapidly on the rise and homes are increasingly networked. And these consoles will be always on and connected," Michael Gartenberg of Jupiter Research said. "That provides new opportunities that simply haven't existed in the past."
The video game industry's influence extends well beyond its billions in sales, which exceed global box office receipts. Many teens and young adults prefer playing games to watching television or going to the movies. And the rapid-fire visual aesthetic of games has migrated to TV shows and films.
"We're talking about a global phenomenon," said Henry Jenkins III, founder and director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT and author of "Convergence Culture."
"For the teens and college-age students, it's the dominant entertainment medium of choice. Bar none," he said.
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First in line
At the Circuit City in Hawthorne, more than 120 people pitched tents and camped out in the parking lot -- some since Sunday night -- for the opportunity to buy one of the 100 PS3s rumored to go on sale there at midnight.
Hawthorne resident Raul Vallejo, 36, was among the first to arrive at 9 p.m. Sunday, with his 14-year-old son, Joey. The pair toted a cooler filled with provisions and two PlayStation Portable hand-held game systems to pass the time. Vallejo said he unsuccessfully tried to place advance orders online and at three stores.
"I'm not going to miss this, so I took four days off," said Vallejo, who has owned every video game system to come out since 1977's Atari 2600.
