This month: The PS2 – just what the heck’s going on?

Milkshake’n’honey? Yeah!

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By now, you’ll doubtless have heard the latest rumours about the launch of the Playstation 2. According to apparently well-informed sources (but strenuously denied by Sony), the European launch of the console has been delayed until the middle of November, with the price looking likely to come in at £349.

It’s also being suggested that possibly as few as 120,000 machines will be available in the UK, most if not all of which will go to people who’ve pre-ordered the machine. But who knows the real truth? Here’s the answer: Nobody.

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The astonishing fact of the matter is that even Sony almost certainly don’t know how much the Playstation 2 is going to cost yet, how many will be available or, even, exactly when they’re going to release it.

You might find it disturbing that with only two months to go until launch no-one seems to have a clue what they’re doing, but it’s the truth. Sony have been working so flat out to get the PS2 ready that almost any hiccup can still derail their plans. The real question, though, is whether anyone should care.

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One thing that pretty much everyone seems to agree on is that PS2s won’t be freely available to just walk into a shop and buy until at least next spring. By that time, all the smart money says that the price will have come down to a maximum of £250.

But with the press having been hyping the machine for almost two years, you’d be forgiven for not wanting to wait that long. So let’s take a look and see what you’ll actually be missing if you don’t get a PS2 until, say, next April.

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The answer, of course, is that if you wait until next April to get a PS2, you’ll miss precisely this much:

Nothing.

The PS2’s launch software line-up is, if anything, even crummier than the Dreamcast’s. All that’s on offer is, basically, a bunch of games that you’ve already got, only with nicer graphics. There’s a Ridge Racer game (arguably the worst one), a Tekken game (a tweaked, prettier version of a two-year-old coin-op), a FIFA game...

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The only PS2 game so far that’s shown even a hint of anything new or exciting is the neat fireworks-based puzzle game Fantavision, but there’s no word yet on whether that’ll even be released over here, and even if it is it’s not going to be a smash hit.

The PS2 has sold well in Japan (because cheap DVD players aren’t as common over there as they are here), but even there game sales have been terrible. And the reason is that the games offer nothing you can’t already get without forking out £300-odd quid on a new console.

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So if it does turn out that the PS2 is delayed, and that it costs a fortune, and that you can’t get one anyway because there aren’t any to buy, try not to worry about it. You’re not missing anything.