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Long read: The beauty and drama of video games and their clouds

"It's a little bit hard to work out without knowing the altitude of that dragon..."

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PS2 release balls-up?

The console isn't due out until the 24th, but we got ours this morning. Somebody jumping the gun?

It was about 10am yesterday morning when I was jolted upright at my desk by the thunderous racket of my phone bleating at me from the other side of the room. On the other end, it turned out, was a Gameplay representative, asking if I wouldn't awfully mind confirming the delivery and payment details for my shiny PlayStation 2, due to arrive on Friday morning. After replacing the receiver, I went back to sleep.. until now. Cue a similar sort of occurence about five minutes ago, only this time it was the doorbell that awoke me from my mid-morning slumber. A nicely dressed Parcel Force fellow handed me a parcel, and I honestly had no idea what it was. Tearing the cardboard away I froze, looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. Yep, today is the 23rd of November, and yes, I am a customer in the United Kingdom with a PlayStation 2. Talk about jumping the gun, eh? Congratulations to Gameplay for managing to cope with the demand, and lets hope they aren't the subject of some ungodly legal ramifications for getting the machine to some customers a day early.. An interesting point that you might like to make a note of is a little black CD sleeve included with the machine, containing a Demo Disc, the very disc we've all been bemoaning the lack of. There's only one way to answer your critics I suppose. Playable demos include Wild Wild Racing, FIFA 2001 and SSX Snowboarding, with videos of Fantavision, Dead or Alive 2, ISS Pro and Ridge Racer V. Also included is Find My Own Way, allegedly a graphical technology demo and Yabasic, a bit of programming software. So there you have it, the PlayStation 2, in consumers' hands, and a day early to boot. What is the world coming to?