Sega's 128bit baby was released in 1999 to a variable response.
Would it be able to deliver on it's online promise
(6 billion + players boasted the blurb)?.
Would it be as poorly handled as the Saturn?.
Would anyone bother to develop anything good on it?.
Well it has, sort of...
Yes it has managed some on-line games, the first being the 16bit
looking (but fun to play!) Chu Chu Rocket.
Various other games followed, but there has never been an influx
of games.
To be fair Sega tried their best with Dreamcast but suffered from
the same problems as Atari, little money and an in-ability to
convince the big software houses that machine was also going to
beat off the Playstation and more importantly at the time
the Playstation 2.
Embarrassingly the ancient Playstation still outsells it,
software wise.
Sega's machine is still a much better option than the PS2
(which is looking like it will be joining these pages very
soon.. ho ho).
It's cheap (mainly due to Sega ceasing production in March 2001),
has some great games such as Shenmue, Soul Calibur, MSR and
Jet Set Radio (or whatever they are calling it now), and you
can surf the web (in a kind of restricted TV style fashion) with it.
Sega's machine has suffered a bit from the kind of cheap conversions
that are killing the PS2, most notably Tomb Raider and a whole host
of driving games that look no better than their N64 counterparts.
Sega's machine also doesn't have a decent footie sim on it
(though it's still trying) which of course is bound to lead
to a commercial death....
(www.zhell.co.uk/dreamcst.html)
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