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Dreaming of Dreamcast | page 1, 2, 3
But as a rudimentary browsing tool, the Dreamcast serves its purpose. And its greatest potential lies in online gaming: allowing Dreamcast users to play their favorite Sega games together, competing across the Internet. This has been one of the much-hyped aspects of the Dreamcast -- but, oddly, not a single one of the games that Sega has currently released allows networked, online play. (According to IGN.com, Sega hasn't set up the American gaming network yet because it requires an immense infrastructure). Instead, although you can access the Net while playing games like Sonic the Hedgehog, there is no true "interactivity"; the best you can do is visit the Sonic home page. But when you log in through the Sonic game, it does change the Web browser interface to feature cute little Sonic characters as icons. Sega is counting on the Dreamcast to revive the company from the throes of near-death. Sega, which once ruled the console gaming market with a market share of nearly 60 percent, flopped with the Saturn, its 64-bit graphic system, and now claims a mere 1 percent of the console market, while Sony and Nintendo share the rest. But the current console systems are now several years old, and all three companies are coming out with new 128-bit systems. Sega has the advantage of being first to market, but Sony and Nintendo expect to launch their new machines, also boasting Internet capabilities, in fall 2000, and will provide stiff competition -- Sony's graphics are rumored to be even better than the Dreamcast's, and both Sony and Nintendo will use a DVD format that allows users to play games and movies. Sega has a sales target of 1.5 million units by March, hoping to nab consumers before its competitors launch their products. But the Dreamcast's main competition may not be Sony or Nintendo at all, but the desktop computer. With the rise in quality of PC gaming, console game machines increasingly feel like an antiquity from a past era. Computers now offer incredible graphics and sound, along with access to the networked gaming available online, so why would you want to buy a whole separate gaming system that communicates only with your television? (The main advantage of consoles, beyond some of the great games that are offered for these systems, is their smoother play -- less plagued by bugs and crashes -- and the fact that they offer a more social kind of gaming, where you can plop down on the couch with a passel of friends and a box of joysticks.) Computer game sales were up 18 percent in 1998, although industry experts forecast that console sales will continue to exceed PC gaming sales, both in total sales and in sector growth. The Sega Dreamcast -- part Net machine, part gaming machine, with a CD player thrown in for good measure -- is addressing many of these issues. It is a superior, multipurpose gaming machine, good for sitting around with friends and (if Sega gets its act together) strangers across the Net; and though it still can't compete with the overall utility of a PC, it costs only $199.95 and could certainly enable kids to e-mail grandma. The Dreamcast may have an important place in the future if we do move into an appliance future, in which the "computer" moves out of the PC and into specialized, Internet-ready, single-purpose devices -- gaming machines, kitchen computers and the like. Regardless of whether the company loses the console battle and goes down in flames, Sega has succeeded in being the first to reinvent the capabilities of gaming machines as we know them -- which is why everyone on the bus is making such a fuss. Even if the Dreamcast itself isn't actually "thinking," it's clear that Sega is.
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About the writer Table Talk Sound off Related Salon stories A PC in every pot When we have free computers in every room, will alternative operating systems like Linux, Be and Amiga rule the world? Can the Dreamcast save Sega? Sega wants to lift its market share out of the single digits. Will a cool new console, $100 million in ads and fresh leadership do the trick? Three lives in Everquest When a game is this beautiful and complex, who cares about a few deaths along the way?
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