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Nintendo launched the latest version of its video game console, the GameCube, in Europe on Friday.
 Nintendo has shipped 500,000 consoles for the launch and plans to add another 500,000 in the next eight weeks. The GameCube will retail for around EUR199 in Europe and for STG130 in Britain.
GameCube will be competing with Sony's PlayStation2, which has been on the market for over a year, while Microsoft's Xbox was launched in Europe in March. And although it will feature similar high-speed microprocessors that enable realistic graphics, the purple-coloured GameCube will be around EUR100 cheaper than its rivals.
In fact the Japanese company is competing in a USD20 billion-plus global market that now rivals film and music as the most popular entertainment pastimes. The importance of the European video game market has grown considerably in the past five years. It has been estimated that European video game hardware and software sales will reach USD7.5 billion in 2002, accounting for 31 percent of global sales.
Sony's PlayStation 2 has been highly successful partly because it has a built-in DVD video player. But GameCube, which does not include a DVD player, is a pure games machine. It will launch with 20 games, many of which are exclusives. Nintendo, which has the most established brand in the business, has attracted a loyal fan base because of the perceived quality of its games. Microsoft's Xbox has been struggling, partly because of the initial high price of its machine.
According to Reuters, Nintendo, the only console maker without a strategy for on-line game play, will unveil plans for Internet-based services for the GameCube at a key industry trade show later this month. Despite high hopes for on-line-gaming in the late-1990s, it has not yet taken off, even though Xbox and Playstation both have on-line functionality built-in.
Sony has said it will establish a fund to assist publishers with the development of on-line games, and Microsoft has long touted functions like live updates of games that the Xbox's on-line access will make possible.
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