Pre-Order Crash

Japanese gamers eager to make the jump to Sony's Playstation 2 caused a crash of the company's online sales system. According to Sony Computer Entertainment president Ken Kutaragi, the first day of pre-orders for the March 4 Japanese Playstation 2 launched generated as many as 500,000 hits a minute, and caused the site to fail. "The orders were beyond our imagination. We are doing our utmost to get the site back up," said Kutaragi.