Playstation 2 boosts DVD sales

Sony has sold 980,000 Playstation 2 consoles since the product's launch in Japan on Saturday, boosting the sales of DVDs in the country overnight.

The company said the sales figures were 10 times that of the originalPlaystation console which it rolled out five years ago. Sales figures for Playstation 2 include those sold on the internet.

Sony's decision to include a DVD player in the console has also rocketed thesales of DVDs in Japan. Retailers reported that sales of DVDs quadrupled over the weekend, thanks to the launch.

Sony has billed Playstation 2 as the "entertainment platform for the home". The consumer electronics giant believes that the console's cinema-quality graphics and DVD-Rom drive put it years ahead of the PC and on a par with advanced workstations used by engineers.

Critics believe that Sony has made a mistake by not including a modem in the console - something rival vendor Sega has done in its Dreamcast. Sony is unlikely to ship a net connection for Playstation 2 until next year.

Sony argues that a modem is pointless at this stage as few people havebroadband access, making it too slow for the console's high-quality graphics.

Microsoft is expected to release details of its games console, codenamed the X-box, later this week.