Digital Titans Tangling in Los Angeles This Week
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Digital titans are tangling in Los Angeles this week. Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3, as you saw their for short, opens up today. CNN's James Hattori went there and found out that it's all about game consoles this year.</s>JAMES HATTORI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In a video game battle worth more than $9 billion in annual sales, the battle lines are shifting while competing commercial armies. Video console underdog Microsoft staged a preemptive online announcing Xbox line. That's the software behemoth plan this fall where Xbox owners play each other over the Internet, with an initial cost of $50 the first year.</s>ROBBIE BACH, CHIEF XBOX OFFICER: They want you to be able to use voice to communicate, chat and taunt in the game. That's what community experiences are all about.</s>HATTORI: As for the battle over game console dominance, Xbox versus Nintendo's Gamecube and Sony's Playstation 2, the industry's biggest player says it's all in the numbers.</s>KAZ HIRAI, PRESIDENT, SONY COMPUTER ENTERTAINMENT AMERICA: Definitely with more than 30 million units worldwide compared to 3 to 4 million with competitors, hands down, the Playstation is the overall winner in this so-called console wars.</s>HATTORI: So now the skirmishing focuses again on content. Who has more exclusive games and familiar faces?</s>GEORGE HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT, NINTENDO: Not surprising, but our greatest assets are our characters, Mario, Donkey Kong, Metroid, who has not been showing for many years, so we are going to take full advantage of those, and of course those are actors that don't require any talent payments.</s>HATTORI: And the bottom line is, the stakes in this arena are huge. Video game and hardware sales surpassed Hollywood box office receipts last year.</s>KAREN JONES, INDUSTRY ANALYST: Sixty percent of all Americans play video games; 35 percent of those are over the age of 28. So it's not just this small niche market that appeals to, say, 14-year-old boys.</s>HATTORI: It's a market drawing billions of dollars in new investment as companies battle to win the hearts, and minds and money of hardcore gamers. James Hattori, CNN, Los Angeles.