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HACK AND SLASH

Technology has kept teens engrossed in their games for 30 years. As in the days of Pong they still gather to compete — whether in a NASCAR game or a shoot-’em-up adventure like Quake — or to engage in an online, interactive skater game with another teen sitting in his bedroom across the globe.

The much-anticipated release of Halo 2, which can be played only on XBox, led GameStop to a record-breaking sales day in November. Of the 2.4 million copies of Halo 2 sold in the first 24 hours of its availability, about 525,000 were sold at GameStop alone, the chain said. Halo 2 sales in total that first day were $125 million, 25 percent above what Microsoft executives had predicted.

Another long-awaited video-game sequel, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, which is played on PlayStation 2 machines, was also released in the third quarter and sold about 2 million copies in its first six days.

The newest, hottest games, like Halo and Grand Theft Auto sell for $49.99, the price point teens most frequently buy (42.6 percent of them do), according to a Piper Jaffray survey done last fall. Lower-price games in the $20, $30 and $40 range are more evenly split. The latest in hardware, meanwhile, is Sony Corp.’s PlayStation Portable game player, introduced in the U.S. just this year.

If all of this technology has older heads spinning, there is a remedy: They can still buy the Atari Pong games on eBay.

— FL