Dear Future Gamer

My thanks to Nigel Sampson for providing much amusement in his 'shout' last week. He appears to have taken up 'The Role of Controversy' with ease, recently left behind by our sensitive, no-swearing, Tory friend, Patrick Gannon.

However, I do feel that he raised at least one interesting point about consoles. Sega, Nintendo and Sony are all Japanese. Why doesn't some British company come up with a cracking console? Okay, so the overheads of development and marketing are huge, but there are large enough British companies out there to give it a go, and I reckon even Richard Branson could try to flog a Virgin games machine. I suppose it's even more surprising that the yanks haven't made a charge - it's not like them to settle for foreign stuff so easily.

Andrew Vivian

FG: Although there's no fully British console, a lot of our technology and expertise is incorporated into the consoles already available, and those that are in the pipleline too. The cost and risk involved in producing a new console and getting the public to accept it is phenomenal and highly risky. I like the idea of a Virgin games machine though. What about it, Mr B? Or how about a Marks & Sparks console, or a Spice Girls one? We could be on to something here.