MARCH 10, 2000 VOL. 26 NO. 9

C U T T I N G E D G E
Action Station

ALSO IN ASIAWEEK Cover: Internet money goes shopping in Hong Kong and what PCCW-HKT means for old-economy firms in Asia • Players: The deal, the winners and the losers • Interview: Richard Li on bagging the region's biggest buy • SingTel: What now for Singapore Telecom? • Chart: Comparing PCCW and Cable & Wireless HKT • No. 1: The Lis are definitely Asia's top business family Editorial: Taiwan should respond to China's peace feeler - hidden in a war threat Editorial: India's RSS must curb its chauvinism Philippines: Amid terrorist attacks in Mindanao, President Joseph Estrada plays tough with MILF insurgents Brunei: The sultanate sues Prince Jefri Singapore: Behind Ong Teng Cheong's maverick presidency • Extended Interview: Ong does not regret riling his former colleagues Nepal: Why the Maoists are resurgent Green Stakes: Why Asia has to clean up - fast • Snapshots: Where countries stand on the environment • Eco-warriors: Fighting to save the planet • By Design: Ideas that can make a difference Exhibitions: The art world - a proxy cross-straits battlefield Newsmakers: India's pointman for defense Real Estate: Building up Indonesia's multimedia dreams MyWeb: As this Malaysian Internet company proves, a U.S. listing is not an automatic road to riches Investing: Don't use yesterday's rules to value tomorrow's hottest telecommunications companies Business Buzz: CLOB gets resolved Viewpoint: Political reform is inevitable in China

Asiaweek Pictures

If you walk the streets of Tokyo on the morning of March 4, take care you don't trip over a semi-comatose teenager in a sleeping bag. The doorways of the electronics stores in Akihabara district will host a giant slumber party the night before, as videogame devotees jostle to be first to get their sore fingers on the Sony PlayStation2. The new console is the most eagerly awaited game machine ever. The reason: what Sony calls the Emotion Engine, a 128-bit chip capable of drawing 20 million polygons (the building blocks of 3-D computer images) every second. The original PlayStation (most of the games for which will run on the PS2) could handle a mere 360,000. Such graphics grandeur will give PS2 games a look closer to Hollywood special effects than Pac-Man. And the movie magic doesn't end there. For $360, the PS2 is also a DVD video player. With Sony expecting to sell one million units in the first weekend, the PS2 will give Japan's sluggish DVD market a huge boost. It could also get more Japanese online. Currently only 15% of the population log on. Next year Sony will offer a high-speed Internet connection, turning the PS2 into a Net access device for online gaming, shopping, e-mail and entertainment. The PS2 has competition, not least from Microsoft. Seeing its Web-browser chokehold threatened, the software giant is moving into hardware with a rival console called X-box. But with PlayStation already holding 50% of the $10 billion-a-year videogames market, Sony will be hard to beat.