Playstation 2, the next-generation model of Sony's popular Playstation game console, will hit the Japanese market next March 4, with introductions to the North American and European markets to follow by about a half year. The unit's suggested retail price will be about $362, or the same as the Playstation when it was first introduced in December 1994.

SCE plans to have one million units ready to sell on the first two days of availability in Japan. The company intends to establish a production capacity of about 300,000 units per month by that time.

When SCE announced the outline of the game console in March this year, two major functions — communications and DVD-Video playback — were left undisclosed. Playstation 2 will have DVD-Video capability as a standard function and will connect to cable TV networks through an Ethernet interface provided in a PC Card.

Ken Kutaragi, president and chief executive officer of SCE, said, "cable TV network is the most practical network which can support wideband communications. There is no other network which allows large volume data transmission that we aim at."

Kutaragi introduced Playstation 2 (PS2) as a game console that will grow a computer entertainment market. Furthermore, "we want to pursue the networked digital computer entertainment market using PS2 as the base," he said.

SCE expects that wideband communications will start emerging, even in homes, around 2001. "SCE wants to propose the scheme which will form the future infrastructure," said Kutaragi.

PS2 has a PC Card Type III slot in its back. The PC Card Ethernet Interface connects the Playstation 2 to cable modems.

SCE will aim at direct bit data distribution services and will begin to offer the interface card from 2001. "For downloading data with PS2, we are going to develop the technology assuming hard drives will be used as a storage, because its bit cost is dropping sharply, " said Kutaragi. Starting with the distribution of PS and PS2's digital content, SCE intends to expand the distribution of the content to much wider fields.

For the digital data distribution, SCE has adopted MagicGate, an over-the-network security system developed by parent Sony that uses a chip with encryption and authentication functions.

While Sega Enterprises Ltd. positions Internet accessibility as the key feature for its new Dreamcast game console, and Nintendo Co. Ltd. also intents to add that function to its Gameboy, SCE has no intention to making Internet accessibility a main feature of PS2.

Since the game console has a PC Card slot, a third party can provide a PC Card modem and browser software for Playstation 2, but "SCE has no such an intention," a company spokesman said. "We have no interest in a modem."

In 2001, once PS2 connects to a cable TV network though the Ethernet interface, users will be able to access the Internet through CATV operators that also serve as information service providers. But until then, PS2 may not have any Internet connectability.

The PS2 has a drive which can read a CD-ROM at 24 times normal speed and at four times the speed of DVD-ROM. It has a memory card with the same shape as the Playstation's 64-kbit memory card, but the PS2 card has an 8-Mbyte capacity.