IT'S GAMESMANSHIP SONY'LL BE BELLE OF TRADE SHOW BALL.

Byline: David Bloom Staff Writer

In 1999, it was Sega's turn to be belle of the ball, but in 2000, it's Sony's, as the video-gaming business gathers in Los Angeles this week for its biggest dance of the year, the Electronic Entertainment Expo.

The sprawling annual trade show, known as E3, consumes seemingly every corner of the mammoth Los Angeles Convention Center. It gets an early start today with press conferences from both Sony and Nintendo, but officially runs Thursday through Saturday.

Sony is expected to finally reveal some of the details of the U.S. version of the PlayStation 2, the eagerly awaited successor to the most successful video-gaming console in history. More than 70 million PlayStation units sold worldwide since being introduced five years ago.

When it debuted in Japan in March, the PlayStation 2 sold a whopping 1 million units its first week, despite what was largely considered a mediocre set of initially available games.

U.S. gamers have been eagerly awaiting the machine, all the more so because the American launch titles look much more satisfying, using the PS2's remarkable graphic and computing power to go beyond even the Sega Dreamcast, which debuted strongly last September after dominating E3.

The PS2 offers substantially more powerful graphic capabilities than the Dreamcast, and also plays DVDs and the thousands of games created for the original PlayStation.

And Sony has been currying companies, such as movie studios and record labels, outside the gaming industry to create new kinds of interactive experiences for its machine.

``The system has been hyped for so long, promising incredible graphics and just about anything developers have dreamed of doing, they can do with this machine,'' said Ben Rinaldi, senior editor of Game WEEK.

But Sony hasn't revealed crucial details about the machine's U.S. version, such as its debut date or price (in Japan, about $360). The best guesses are October and $299, said Rinaldi.

Sony may also use the show to respond to Microsoft's recent announcement of its own powerful new video-gaming console, the X-Box, due out in late 2001. To compete with X-Box's remarkable technical specifications, many observers believe Sony will add features like a built-in modem or networking card for Internet access and a hard drive to store character information, Internet downloads and more.

Expect at least most of those questions to get answered this week. Much less, however, is expected to come from Nintendo's press conference today at a downtown hotel.

Last year, the company used E3 to announce initial plans for its next- generation console, the Dolphin. Since then, Nintendo has said little.

``I think they'll continue to be silent,'' said John Davison, editor in chief of Electronic Gaming Monthly, the largest enthusiast magazine in the console business. ``Everyone is in kind of glamorous, glitzy mode, but Nintendo will keep plodding along with good first-party games and putting money in the bank.''

That's because though the Nintendo 64 seems woefully out of date compared to the new machines, and most outside companies have stopped making new games for it, Nintendo's terrific stable of in-house developers are pumping out several much-anticipated titles this year, including sequels to Goldeneye, Zelda and Banjo Kazooie.

Nintendo also sells the Game Boy handheld device, buoyed by the fabulously

successful Pokemon franchise, which will see at least two more versions, Gold and Silver, released this year.

The company also may show off its Game Boy Advance, which combines gaming with a personal digital organizer and wireless communication capabilities, in a bid to challenge popular devices such as the Palm.

The Advance, which is months from release, also faces competition from the Cybiko, a handheld hybrid device debuting at E3.

The Cybiko is both a personal organizer and a gaming machine, with an absolutely tiny keyboard and stylus. It has built-in 900-Mhz wireless capabilities, like some home phone systems, that allow you to share information with other Cybiko owners within about 300 feet. And it can link to the computer to send and receive emails. The $149 device targets teens.

Other kinds of hardware and tech toys will be on display this week, like the Poo-Chi from Hasbro, whose subsidiary Tiger Electronics scored big a couple of years ago with the Furby.

The digital doggie isn't as sophisticated as Sony's Aibo robot, but it's a lot cheaper, and still managed to be a huge hit in Japan, selling out a 10,000-unit run in rapid fashion.

Besides all the hardware, more than 2,400 games will be on display, said Doug Lowenstein, president of the Interactive Digital Software Association, show's organizer.

``It's up (500 titles) from last year, which frankly was surprising to me,'' Lowenstein said. ``Competition is pretty intense out there. A lot of products go to market that don't succeed, and certainly don't make money. One would think one would see a tapering off of new titles. But it's been counterbalanced by the whole casual-gaming segment that's growing.''

All told, the business generated nearly $7.5 billion in sales, online and rental revenues last year, and is on track this year to do slightly better, Lowenstein said.

That's despite the cyclical downturn characteristic when a new generation of gaming consoles is about to be introduced.

Casual gaming actually dominates this year's offerings, an IDSA survey showed. Nearly two-thirds of the games on display will target people who want lower-cost, graphically simpler titles that typically are based on franchises they know from other media.

That casual gamer market is broad-based, from people playing solitaire online to families playing an electronic version of Monopoly to arm-chair hunters picking off big game in the latest knockoff of Deer Hunter.

That emphasis also fits with a markedly different political/cultural atmosphere from last year, when Lowenstein was defending the industry in the wake of the mass killings at Columbine High School in Colorado. The two youthful killers were fans of gory first-person shooter titles.

This year, Lowenstein can point to an industry where the three top sellers on the PC were ``Who Wants to Be a Millionaire'' and the clever and complex simulations ``RollerCoaster Tycoon'' and ``SimCity 3000.''

He also can point to the rapid rise of Hasbro Interactive, which in less than five years has become one of the industry's biggest publishers by making video-game hits out of converted board games like Monopoly and updated vintage titles like Frogger.

``This segment is growing and companies are looking at it,'' Lowenstein said. ``It's potentially a very profitable segment. Look at the cost of making richer, deeper, more immersive games. Companies realize if you make that investment (in a top-quality game), it's not automatic that you'd have a profitable project at the end.''

That doesn't mean there won't be upscale titles, and there won't be controversy. Going into the show, controversy has most dogged ''Soldier of Fortune,'' a bloody game loosely connected to the mercenary's magazine, and ''Panty Raider,'' a goofball revision of the frat-rat pastime involving supermodels, lingerie and aliens that has angered feminist and pro-family groups.

Lowenstein called such protests an ``episodic'' hazard of the business.

``That will continue to be the case as people see products and hear about products they think go too far,'' Lowenstein said. ''They ignore the fact that the products represent an incredibly small part of the market.''

THE FACTS

Electronic Entertainment Expo

--What: The world's largest video game hardware and software conference

--Where: Los Angeles Convention Center

--When: Thursday through Saturday

The event is a trade show and not open to the public.

Source: Daily News Research

CAPTION(S):

2 photos, box

Photo: (1 -- 2 -- color) Game players can't wait for the newest models, to be unveiled this week at the Electronic Entertainment Expo. Among the new games: the $149 Cybiko, a combination personal organizer and a gaming machine, with a tiny keyboard and stylus, and the Nintendo 64, which comes in colors that include grape, fire and ice.

Gus Ruelas/Staff Photographer

Box: THE FACTS (See text)