±±¾©Èü³µpk10

On the surface of it, Microsoft's long-awaited foray into the games console market doesn't seem like much of a hard luck case. Not only does Xbox have the resources of Gates and company behind it, it also has the most impressive array of technical credentials yet unveiled. Chief among these is the ability to hook players up to the internet and allow them to compete against remote rivals around the globe. This has been the holy grail of console manufacturers and Xbox is the first to make the facility available to users.

The launch of the console last week generated its fair share of hype - with punters queuing around the block and plenty of tabloid coverage.

However, Microsoft's marketing brains will be aware this honeymoon could prove shortlived. Xbox is the new kid on a particularly bruising block.

Every time a new set of consoles hits the market, the audience is asked to choose sides, to buy into the right slice of gaming culture and ensure that the games and other products coming out of their chosen manufacturer for the next four years will be the right ones for them. You can't win this kind of loyalty just by listing a load of technical specifications or showing quick cuts of graphics onscreen - as Sega's Dreamcast found to its cost last year. The mass console market is a pitch for hearts and minds and the number of geeks who will swoon at 128-bit technology is never going to be enough. To convince users to defect from the market's top dog, Sony PlayStation, you have to offer up a slice of inspiration.

BBH has taken the internet connection - which gives Xbox a unique technical edge, for a few months at least - and made it the basis for an entirely new vision of gaming. Gone is the individual intensity of "conquering worlds.

In its place we have a light-hearted view of playing that positions it as a natural instinct as healthy as any other communal force.

In many ways, the identification with natural life is the final step for console advertising. PlayStation took us from children's games to edgy adult escapism - yet the wave of mostly male twentysomethings consequently drawn into the market is arguably becoming exhausted. To expand the sector further, console manufacturers must make the next step - and overcome the inherent suspicion that so many adults feel about technology playing an intimate part in their leisure activities.

This is the first piece of work for years that actually tries to push the boundaries in this way and engage those who would have run a mile from the "Third Place". It's done so without any of the product details that would have pigeonholed it as another techno-geek product - or any of the screen shots that give Leo Burnett's Gamecube ads, which also break this week, the outdated flavour of kids stuff. Those spots are fundamentally disappointing because they lack the nerve truly to challenge convention. BBH's ad has that in spades.

It's not free of weaknesses or risks. The execution flirts with overearnestness - particularly in the last third - and it lacks the gripping, lyrical intensity with which PlayStation's "double life" created the modern gaming sector. What it does have, though, is a thought-provoking idea and a memorable visual style that ensures the audience keeps thinking.

And if the console market is to evolve, that's just what it needs.