Microsoft Corp has been called a monopoly and worse, but seldom an underdog. But when the world's largest software company enters the hyper-competitive, fiercely loyal video game market with Thursday's launch of its Xbox game machine, it will do so from a standing start and as a distant third in a $20 billion industry led by Sony Corp 6758.T and Nintendo Co. Ltd. 7974.OS Microsoft is spending some $500 million to hype its powerful new game machine and could lose twice that in the coming years on Xbox in order to stake a claim to the future of consumer electronics beyond the personal computer, analysts said. The $299 Xbox, which makes its retail debut in New York City on Thursday, outmuscles rival boxes, with features similar to many laptops that are three times the price, including a 733 MHz Intel Corp INTC.O Pentium III chip, 64 megabytes of RAM, an 8 gigabyte hard drive and the ability to play DVDs.
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