Microsoft Can't Play Around in Push to Sell Game Deck.

WHEN it comes to marketing products to the digital generation, "X" definitely marks the spot.

While it makes relatively few appearances in the dictionary, this lonely little letter is a multimedia star. From "X-Files" to the X-Games to the "X-Men," the alphabet's 22nd letter is the first choice for companies looking to capture a dose of edgy, anti-establishment chic. I mean, would anyone have rushed off to see a movie called the "W-Men?" I think not.

Even Bill Gates is attempting to cash in on the X-citement. By this time next year, Microsoft will try to extend its PC dominance into the home entertainment market with a video game console called the X-Box.

Like the Sony Playstation and Nintendo 64, the X-Box will connect to a television set and will play games. And like the upcoming successors of those machines, it will provide Internet access, play DVD movies and perform other functions that give game consoles a much larger role in living rooms around the world.

Most Microsoft critics, including myself, initially figured the X-Box would be X-ecuted by the game-market leaders. But I'm beginning to think the company can succeed if it manages to forget much of what it knows about computers.

Rules of the game

Anyone who plays games on a PC knows how difficult this supposedly relaxing pastime can be.

Before you ever "frag" a demon or start a race, you have to get the software up and running on your computer. Depending on your setup, this can involve anything from a simple tour of the instructions to multiple crashes and weeklong email exchanges with technical support.

It's easy to blame the game programmers. But they're faced with the unenviable task of writing software that's supposed to work on everything from cutting-edge systems to 3- or 4-year-old PCs running infinite combinations of hardware and software. It's like trying to knit a sweater that fits every member of a family you've never met.

Newer PC games also tend to rely on flashy graphics that overwhelm older computers. If I tried to load any of today's top-selling games on my Pentium 133, the poor machine would be coughing and gasping for days until I pulled the plug.

And even if I shelled out $3,000 tomorrow for a state-of-the-art PC, I'd need to upgrade within 12 months to play next year's hot new title.

Game consoles render most of these complaints moot. My friend's 4-year-old Playstation can run every new game on the market. And my 2-year-old Nintendo .64 immediately boots up and plays any game cartridge I can cram into the slot.

So why does anyone play games on a PC? Because their greater computing power and memory allow deeper, more complicated games. Also, they can connect to the Net for head-to-head play, bringing a social dimension to an otherwise isolating endeavor.

Enter the X-Box

The X-Box will try to bridge those two worlds by offering not only Net connectivity -- a feature on Sega's Dreamcast and upcoming machines from Sony and Nintendo -- but also the console world's first-ever on-board hard drive. That will allow programmers to offer deeper games, new episodes and other features currently confined to PCs.

But it also introduces a level of complexity that could lead to PC-like problems. There's no way one Nintendo game can cause problems for another because the machine plays just one cartridge at a time. On the X-Box, though, game files could step on each other's toes in ways nobody expects, just as they do on PCs. And if system updates are stored on the hard drive, they too could be damaged.

A hard drive also could encourage the same sort of sloppy code that slips into many PC games. Console games usually work without a flaw, partly because programmers know they can't fix them once they ship. But when PC game programmers come up against a deadline, they often release games with known bugs, knowing they can be patched later with an online update.

Console gamers won't stand for these problems, particularly when the Playstation 2 to be released this fall and Nintendo's Game Cube -- due by Christmas 2001 -- can be counted on to maintain the flawless functionality of their predecessors.

Microsoft has encouraged enough cooperation from game designers to give X-Box a chance. But for the box to succeed, it must subordinate Microsoft's penchant for PC-style complexity to the console market's demand for simplicity.

Console gamers won't settle for Windows' version of plug and play -- they're used to the real thing.