Judging by the interest in the new machine, witnessed by Newsbytes on Sunday in several electronics stores, the delays and lateness of the new unit don't seem to have hurt Nintendo, although it was vital to meet the Sunday launch deadline if the company's credibility with investors, but maybe not games players, was to remain.

The new machine enters a drastically different games market to that of a few years ago, when Nintendo, with its Super Famicon system, reigned king and Sega played a second place role. Today, with the delay of the Nintendo system, Sega and new entrant Sony have divided the market up between them.

In Japan, sales of Sony's PlayStation have trailed Sega's Saturn by a small amount with the Saturn system registering domestic sales of three million at the end of May, against Sony's 2.7 million. Overseas, where Sony has a much stronger brand name than Sega, sales have totaled 2.3 million against 900,000 for Sega.

Compared to the sales forecasts for its rivals, Nintendo's seem positively conservative. Sony hopes to sell 2.5 million units in Japan in the coming year with Sega aiming to sell the same amount worldwide in the same period. Nintendo is aiming to sell 3.6 million consoles in Japan by the end of the current fiscal year, which ends in March 1997.

Analysts see Nintendo as easily breaking this figure because the new machine is not just another games player, but a new machine from the number one name in gaming and one better than the competition.

Previous consoles were based on 8- and 16-bit technology with the new Sega and Sony machines running on 32-bit systems, which make for better sound and graphics. Nintendo's new machine, as the name suggests, runs on 64-bit technology and promises even better graphics and sound than the competition can offer.

(Martyn Williams/19960624)