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Games Entertainment

Sega plans Dreamcast's U.S. debut 69

Posted by Hemos from the they're-baack dept.
Clith writes "A story at www.news.com talks about availability of the new Sega Dreamcast. The page reports that "the system will be priced at $199 when it debuts on September 9." Will the Playstation2 really be all that much better? " Hmmm...I hope so-yesterday's article about the Playstation 2 has me salivating. Maybe DVD. Mmmm-I love gratitous technology.
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Sega plans Dreamcast's U.S. debut More

Sega plans Dreamcast's U.S. debut

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  • It isn't just a WinCE machine, and AFAIK almost all the games use Sega's API's, so you souldn't worry about MS software in your console, unless you load WinCE from CD (maybe this little puppy could run linux if you find people with too much spare time in their hands to make a linux port =)
    http://sega.com/spotlight/features/dre amcast [sega.com]
    [sega.com]
  • There was a rumour floating around on the lists that they had perfected an emulator disc, and were going to sell it for $25 in Japan. Not sure if that's going to pan out over here, or how subatantiated the rumour is (was?). However, how interested are you going to be if you don't already have a Saturn?
  • The article said it would be able to run games written for Windows CE. What the heck? Does it really take a high-powered game machine
    to do that?


    Eh? What? Pardon?


    What on *earth* has the OS to do with the power of the machine underneath? Just because my Pentium II plays terminal tetris, it doesn't mean my 386 can play Quake II -- yet *oooh* they're both running the same OS.


    I really want a Dreamcast -- because Capcom's Power Stone looks awesome. But then I really want a PS2 as well. And a Vectrex :) -- hell, I'll just get 'em all in the fullness of time.
    --

  • The reason why the article says the Dreamcast will be able to run WinCE games is because the Dreamcast is a WinCE machine. The basic differences are that the OS is slightly modified for the hardware and it uses DirectX (if I remember correctly, although I could be wrong abou that). This info has been around for quite a while now, so it surprises me that some /.'ers don't know about it yet.
  • Dreamcast is dead in the water. The machine has some impressive specs, and the new Mario is very pretty, although somewhat lacking in gameplay, I felt. Maybe I just haven't played it enough.

    However, they needed to release it at the end of last year for it to stand any chance against the PSX2. The official Sega line has been that they knew the PSX2 would be better, because it would be released later, but that Dreamcast would be the most powerful console available now, and would have built up a substantial number of owners by the time PSX2 was released. Now they're planning on releasing it maybe 3 months before PSX2? It doesn't stand a chance.

    Interesting to note that the UK version will be more expensive than anywhere else in the world -- nothing new there, then :-( Also, the UK shops have had Dreamcasts (presumably Japanese imports) on sale for some months now, at around US$480.

    Friends working in the games industry have said that UK publishers, at least, are refusing to touch Dreamcast games. They're expecting PSX2 to take the bulk of the market. In house development is all well and good, but it can't provide the necessary quantity of games to satisfy the demand. Without publishers, there will be no 3rd party games, and without 3rd party games, Dreamcast is dead. Shame, because it looked promising, and it'd be sad to see Sega release another turkey like Saturn...

  • The PSX2 will possibly be relasing in Japan by the end of the year. The Dreamcast has been in out Japan since the end of 1998.

    Yes, maybe that's the case in Japan, but what about the rest of the world? According to friends that are writing games for PSX2, a UK release date is likely in Jan/Feb 2000 -- 3 or 4 months after Dreamcast. I've heard similar timescales for the US.

  • 1) It will very likely be able to play those old PSX games (compatibility is nice...)

    2) It's apparently using a much higher horsepower processor- it's going to be able to do more sophisticated things, things that would be intractable on the Dreamcast.

    3) They are positioning the Playstation2 with DVD capabilities apparently (some of the pictures show the DVD logo on the console of the Playstation2)- if Dreamcast is using just a CD drive, they lose. (I'd sure pay $200-300US for a console that also played DVDs like other DVD players. It's like getting the console for nothing.)

    So what if Sony comes to market "late"- Sega's going to have to pull a rabbit out of their hat. Unless they get most of the games companies out there in their camp, making decent games at a decent price point, the Dreamcast will go down in flames like the Saturn did.
  • The article said it would be able to run games written for Windows CE. What the heck? Does it really take a high-powered game machine to do that?

    --
    :wq
  • According to this ITN article [itn.co.uk], DreamCast will cost £199 [hope that pound before the 199 works]. Info about a built-in modem too.

    Also reported: Sony will drop Playstation price to £69 soon. :-)

  • I saw a Japanese Dreamcast a few days ago in a gaming store, and I regret to report that I was very underwhelmed.

    The two titles they had playing were Sonic Adventure and Virtua Fighter MP. The graphics in Sonic did not impress me at all. There was one fun bit with Sonic racing down a road (the wide-angle camera shot was fairly effective at giving a sense of speed), but most of the rest of the graphics were quite unremarkable (almost primitive in some spots).

    Virtua Fighter was even more disappointing. They appear to be using the exact same motion capture files, so all that's changed are the graphics, which have been dressed up a bit. Further, when the characters step over water, their shadows disappear.

    Since these are obviously Sega's "A" titles, I expected them to really show off what the machine was capable of. If this is the best Dreamcast can do, I fear Sega's in for a very bad year. They were, of course, utter fools to spend any time with WinCE at all. But even if you ignore that, from what I've read, Playstation-2 has little to worry about.

    Schwab

  • 1) There was never a suggested $499 price point. It still remains to be seen if the $199 model will contain the 56k (not 33.6k like in Japan) modem or not. According to remarks made by Stolar yesterday it appears it will and Sega will eat losses on the hardware for software sales.

    2) There have been no such reports out of Japan. The dreamcast does seem to run pretty hot if you are used to the Saturn but compared to a current playstation its about the same. After reading all these specs on the PSX2 I am wondering how they are planning on keeping this sucker cool... without it being loud as hell from fans.

    Im getting a PSX2. But wait a year and avoid all
    these amazing Sega games? no way! I got to spend about 3hrs playing at SOA one night (in downtown SF) and I was truly amazed at how fluid everything was. Even the first gen titles are such a leap over what we have now it amazes. Powerstone and Sonic are going to give sega a LOT of sales.

    ---
    Openstep/NeXTSTEP/Solaris/FreeBSD/Linux/ultrix/OSF /...
  • Uhm the Saturn sucked? What exactly sucked about it? I love reading these responses from people with extreme system loyalty... mostly cuz if all of a sudden NEC suddenly made a comeback with a system that was 2x as powerful as the PSX2 these are the very people that would claim NEC had been superior all along.

    I have all the major game systems. My saturn still gets more play than the rest. The shame is that most American gamers never got to play the last generation of Saturn titles or any that utilized the 4meg ram upgrade. Near perfect Capcom ports and the last batch of RPGs made me perfectly happy about every single penny I spent on the Saturn.

    My playstation sits now with a slew of unfinished RPGs on it... if it wasn't for Gran Tourismo, well it would never get played.

    The n64 sits under the ouch unhooked and all of my games have been loaned out...

    ... but then again maybe I am just too into gameplay unlike this current crop of eye candy gamers. The NeoGeo in my arcade cabinet gets more play by far (prolly 3x) as anything else in my house and more often than not its the venerable Samurai Shodown 2.
    ---
    Openstep/NeXTSTEP/Solaris/FreeBSD/Linux/ultrix/OSF /...
  • You know one feature of this new batch of next gen systems that people keep forgetting is they all include analog triggers... maybe now the tired fighting game genre can get a little life back into it. It is about time that instead of a weak/medium/hard punch button system the game is aware of how hard we press a trigger (many of you older gamers will recall "Street Fighter", yes the original had this in the arcades).

    So few games actually make good use of analog functions right now... but this will soon be changing for the better.
    ---
    Openstep/NeXTSTEP/Solaris/FreeBSD/Linux/ultrix/OSF /...
  • On the issue of DVD.

    I hate to inform all of you people but if the PSX2 does have the ability to play DVD movies (this will be late 2k or 2001 mind you) then the price will still be at least $300. Why? HELLO. Sony also does make consumer land DVD players too (and some of the best). If the PSX2 is selling for $300 from Sony then you can bet home DVD players will be selling for $200 or less. Either that or the PSX2 will be missing a lot of DVD features.
    ---
    Openstep/NeXTSTEP/Solaris/FreeBSD/Linux/ultrix/OSF /...
  • Sheesh. Slashdot passes around incorrect information so much somedays it amazes me.

    WinCE is just ONE OS that the dreamcast can run. It can boot any OS it wants off the CD and all Sega brand games run a Sega OS... anyone can write an OS if they choose and CE is provided to make PC ports easy.

    I almost feel someone should tell all these insane system bigots that their precious n64/psx/and even saturn games had most of the modeling and design done on 95 or NT based programs.

    ---
    Openstep/NeXTSTEP/Solaris/FreeBSD/Linux/ultrix/OSF /...
  • But these latest Dreamcast developments have me worried. Basically, the system was designed for easy PC ports. The development kits are Wintel based, even. There's just a bit too much Microsoft involved for my tastes.

    Still, it's the games that count. The Saturn thrived on its superb Capcom fighters along with gems like the Panzer Dragoon series. But Sega, in their infinite wisdom, screwed up the 6-button layout of their pads (does the Dreamcast have only 6 buttons total now, unlike the Saturn's 8?) which was wonderful for Capcom fighters.

    If the Dreamcast has an excellent Panzer Dragoon title to start with, I'll consider owning one. Otherwise I can't see what else would interest me.

  • The Saturn architecture was rather innovative, but programmers had a helluva time trying to get the most from a dual processor architecture. Trying to get the Dreamcast to play those old games was more trouble than it was worth, as it would've required either emulation (tricky) or additional hardware (expensive).

    And as for playing old Playstation titles, Sega wouldn't open themselves to a big lawsuit by trying.

  • When I first heard about the Dreamcast, I flinched. It had been made and was distributed before Sony even announced the existence or confirmed the suspicions of the existence of a PSX2. So I resigned myself to buy a dreamcast.

    But guess what? After seeing the screenshots, the games being played, and playing the games for myself on a dreamcast, I was horribly dissapointed. THIS was a next generation unit from Sega?? I mean.. come on.. nice polygons and all, but hardly worth $499 when it was released in Japan. I think the only reason why it will sell here in the States for $199 is a marketing ploy just to gain as much marketshare as possible before PSX2 appears on the scenes in Japan(and via import, in the States as well).

    I don't think Sega is lowering the price for the benefit of their customers. They are probably doing it for the same reasons why a store lowers prices. Becaue they are worried that PSX2 WILL bury them. That they won't have enough software developers to write good games. That no one will buy their unit when compared to the PSX2.

    But who knows, right?

    I for one am waiting for the PSX2. I mean.. look at the N64. Another unit I've had the fine pleasure of playing, though also to my disappointment. While the graphics have definitely improved from the SNES, it is hardly fast. It is so slow! And it's polygon ratings are still below that of a PSX1. When it came out, people were wondering why they should wait for something from SEGA or SONY that wasn't real yet.

    Well, more than anything, I think waiting is probably the best bet, unless you need to have the latest greatest unit of every moment, that is.

    Just like how the Dreamcast is turning N64 into a bad memory and sending Nintendo to pick up the pace on a next generation unit, I think PSX2 will do the same to Sega's Dreamcast. Though probably not as severe, but still bad enough.

    Backwards compatibility, btw, will make the PSX2 more atractive to buyers who don't want to feel like they will be losing all their old games. And the PSX2 suffers no slowdowns because of this backwards compatibility simply because the PSX1's compatibility is handled by an I/O chip which is basically a PSX1. Backwards compatibility at no cost to peak performance.

    As for developers wanting to stick with PSX1 level code, I think that they would consider thinking about their future in the industry. Their products, games, are how people can see what great works they can do. And if they can create a masterpiece which will blow away the audience with great sound and graphics, they'd be fools not to make use of the better tools.

    Look at the PC. Game companies are hardly writing games for a 8088/386/486 audience. They are writing for a P5/PII/PIII/K6-2+ audience. People who will be spending the money for an accelerator and a good sound card.

    I think the same will follow suit with Sony's developers. I mean.. why make games that suck? That will just worsen their own image and let another game company get ahead of them.
    - Wing
    - Reap the fires of the soul.
    - Harvest the passion of life.
  • Dreamcast controllers can have as many buttons as they like.
    the standard funky lookin' pad only has 6 though i beleive.
    The arcade stick has 8 i think
  • PSX 2 has a 499 price tag... by sony of japan. Do you really want to spend that much?
    And besides, all the psx2 information is purely speculation considering the system hasn't been created yet.
    The Dreamcast has a modem, can you say that for the PSX2?
    Another thing is the PSX2 isn't going to be out for at least a couple of years. Why miss out on all these cool Dreamcast games. VF3:TB, Sonic, and so many others. These games look amazing for first gen titles.
    Come on, why wait for something that doesn't exist yet. Why wait? when the PSX2 comes out, they'll be something "better" coming down the pipeline.
  • When was Sega ever an American company? Sega is Japanese to the core!
    Sega may have a major American branch, but they will always be Japanese. Nintendo and Sony are also Japanese companies.
  • Dreamcast uses a special propriety CD that stores about 1 gig of data. This is not even half of a single DVD disk. I dont this PSX2 uses a DVD either. If they really wanted to be successful they should use a DVD player, this would give people more than one reason to buy the console. If it can play DVD (maybe Divx too) it would get a larger customer base. Lots of people now are looking into DVD because it's gaining in popularity and support so if they can buy a game console that can play DVD's they will buy it because it's a sounder investment. This also means bigger games for less money, 1 DVD can hold about 10 gigs which is 4 or so hours of MPEG-2 video or PLENTY of video game. I would kill for FF7 on DVD. The console should have a boot ROM onboard with either a custom OS or a unix OS so it could boot without a disk in the drive, or have the game in an alternate OS on the CD which it would boot from disk. They should also think about new processors, instead of just a revamped SGI chip like N64 uses get some new technology in there. VM Labs of Silicon Valley has a chip that gets about 15,000 MIPS and they are working towards 24,000 by the middle of this year. With a chip that powerful you could use raytrace rendering instead of the blocky polygons used in games up till now. So you could do Toy Story in real time. With about 32 megs of video memory and 8 megs of system memory you would have plenty to do complex graphics and games. The N64 suffers from a lack of memory, it only has 4 megs of RAM, you need to buy 50$ worth of expansion RAM in order to play some games to the fullest. These two features I think would make many console buyers happy, the DVD for the price wary parents and the super powerful chips for the technoids that care more about technical proficientcy than fun games.
  • Ever been to Japan? If you had been there you could easily figure out why all console makers release everything there first. Almost everyone plays video games there. They are HUGE there. When a new game comes out (a highly anticipated game that is) it's like a big movie release here. Shit, FF7 had basically the same response to it that the Star Wars prequels have in the US. They make beacoup profits in the land of the rising sun. If games do really well there they can generally assume it will do well here. Lots of games that are released in Japan never make it here, thats how many come out there.
  • Any developer worth his salt on a console will code the closest equivalent to assembly code for the platform and get all the power then can out of the system. How the hell do you think they managed to code things like Yoshi 2 on the SNES and X-Men vs. Street Fighter perfect arcade port for the Saturn (with the 4MB RAM cart)? No one is going to touch the Windows CE OS option unless they're PC game industry programmers without a clue.
  • There is a local console game store that also imports games from other country's. They had a dreamcast and where showing it of about a week after it was sold in japan. It did look good by i only speak/read english so i had no idea what all the menus said. He was also tying to sell it for around 800 dollars(a little high but it did come with some games and other stuff.)
    --
    Joshua Curtis
    Lancaster Co. Linux Users Group
  • It has 4 main buttons, and 2 trigger buttons where your index fingers are, plus an analog and 4-way direction controllers.

    By boss brought one back from Japan. I'm sorry to say that there's no Panzer Dragoon in sight (It was the one of the greatest 3D games on any platform IMO). I got pretty far in Sonic Adventure, and although the game looked absolutely beautiful, the gameplay itself was incredibly counter-intuitive and you can't fast forward through the boring movies.

    Virtua Fighter 3 was another great diappointment. I read in several magazines that the Dreamcast would have greater polygon count and 3D processing power than the Model3 motherboard that Sega used in the arcade version of Virtua Fighter 3. Boy, were they wrong! The arcade version had curved polygons, which I was eagerly awaiting to see in the Dreamcast version. Unfortunately the home version was completely made up of good old faceted polys. And the gameplay can't even touch Tekken 3.

    There was also a penguin racing game. Avoid it. He looked like Tux on crack.

    In all, Sega really screwed up. The Dreamcast came out behind schedule in Japan, and created more bad publicity by demoting the exec in charge of the launch. Sonic wasn't even available until a few weeks after Dreamcast went on sale, and the current crop of games that I played were an enormous letdown. The gameplay didn't even deserve the awesome graphical capabilities of this machine, and Playstation2 seems to have even greater graphical power. I was really rooting for Sega because of nostalgia over the Genesis and hoping they could get over their Saturn disaster in America, but Sony seems to have positioned itself to push Sega out of the home console market permanently.
  • I was at a new chain cyber-cafe called CyberSmith at our local mall, and they had a Dreamcast unit that could be rented out at $9/hr. I had the chance to play with it a little, although the only program running on it was a fighting title still in development (Kinda cool to see the controller responses scroll down the screen).

    The joystick layout isn't too much different than a Playstations. The graphics were pretty sharp. I'd compare them to the Playstations High-Res mode, but faster. I'll probably not buy one, but it looks like it might be an okay box.
  • I really believe the Dreamcast will be a complete flop in America, and here's why:

    - Horrible timing. Right now, most gamers already have at least a PSX or an N64. Believe it or not, both still have at least a year's life left in them. _Most_ people will not want to have to get another console so soon.

    - Let's face it, it's Sega. Their most successful system was the Genesis, and it was still eventually overtaken by the SNES. I don't need to list all their failures to you guys, as you're probably well aware of them already.

    - Why buy a Dreamcast when in just a little more time the TRUE next generation consoles (N200X, PSX2) will arrive? I'm sure many will understand this reasoning.

    Too little too late. And perhaps most importantly, software companies will also recognize these points and be reluctant to develop for the Dreamcast. So don't expect to see a ton of games being made for this thing after it's out for a few months.
  • The PSX2 will possibly be relasing in Japan by the end of the year. The Dreamcast has been in out Japan since the end of 1998.

    Will developers really develop PSX2 games, or will they continue to develop PSX games? I think many will choose the latter, since the PSX2 is suposedly going to be backwards compatible - and developers will want thir games to run on the larger installed base. Time will tell...

  • The news release says September 1999. tht puts it at least 5-6 months ahead of the PSX2 release in the US. Again, tile will tell if Sony meets their projects or if they delay the release... so far PSX2 is vaporware, while Dreamcast units have been shipping since November...
  • actually, the saturn was the last one to try that ^_^ they debuted at the $500 mark and then when playstation came along at $300 they then lowered their prices
  • Can an old Playstation play new Dreamcast titles? :-) well, once developers get off their arses, sence the DC is less powerfull then the psx2, how do you know they wont make a dc emulater that enhances dc games?
  • I'm not a console whiz, so could somebody pleez answer the following question in words of less than six letters?

    Why the @!$% is Sega, an American company, putting so much focus into selling stuff in Japan? Nintendo and Sony are like that but they have an excuse. Sega, if they had any logic at all, would have released DC as early as possible in the US. I mean, if they had the product by 4Q '98, they could've whupped Sony and been able to fight on their own side of the pond. Am I crazy?

    PS: I'm not being selfish, as an estadounidense, since I'm sure I won't even think about buying a DC until their used and cheap.
  • They already have plenty of game companies on board, and a plethora of titles to release the system with... Coming from someone who owns the top Sega, Nintendo & Sony consoles, there's not a better gaming machine on the horizon than the DreamCast. I've got mine on preorder... ;)
    two URLs for your viewing pleasure:
    Sega-otaku [sega-otaku.com]
    Sega's Dreamcast Page [sega.com]

    ---------
    Titanic Wrecking Crew
  • First off, let me qualify my comments a bit: I cling to Sega like a Mac fanatic does with Apple. I've had practically every system they've made (except Nomad, 32X, and Pico), and I've never felt like I made a bad choice. What it comes down to is if I enjoy the games or not. Ther graphics may not have been the best, but I always had fun, and that's what counts.
    A couple of facts, though - programmers DO NOT have to use WinCE. It is provided as an easy programming road, kind of making up for the Saturn's difficult programming setup. Sega's APIs are also available, and are far easier to navigate than the Saturn's set. These APIs are also far more powerful than the CE set. So good programmers will use Sega's stuff, poor programmers will go with DirectX.
    Processing power: The Dreamcast's PowerVR based setup only renders VISIBLE polygons. Other systems render ALL polygons, visible or not. This means that the Dreamcast can render a scene at the same quality as another machine, while using only a fraction of the polys. This saves a lot of overhead.
    The Dreamcast is a hell of a machine. So will the PS2. True fanatics will buy both, but the Dreamcast will have a well-deserved place in any real gamer's collection.
  • I think a lot of you people are judging this system too early, just because it runs WinCE.. I've played around on a Japanese Dreamcast a few times, and I was impressed. And again, like has been said so many times before, it is just CE *CAPABLE*, that doesnt mean every game on it is gonna run CE.. as a matter of fact, most probably aren't. Again, like has been said so many times, video games arent about how fast the drive is, or who has the fastest processors, or the best video capabilities.. its about if you enjoy the games. If you play a Dreamcast and play some games on it, and you don't like it, more power to you.. but dont bash a system just because Microsoft had its hand in some of the development process..
  • they r estimatinag a release of the PS2 no earlier than march of 2000 in japan, not till fall of 2000 here in the US, that gives almost 1 year of lee way for sega, the dreamcast may not be as powerful as the ps2, but games r what makes a system, not how fast it is, and as for price, ps2 at the moment is way to mcuh, also first year games will be on regular CD, NOT DVD that right there takes away 90% of what the system supposidly can do....The announcment of the PS2 was strictly to try and halt sega's momentum with the DC, drop the hype...the DC is here and its a monster, also future upgradable (ram, processor,modem and a DVD drive, OH MY!!)
  • It comes with WinCE, whether it's burned in ROM or on CD, it comes with WinCE. This means MS royalties, this means further meat to their attempts at getting into the embedded market, this means no sales of dreamcast to me EVER.

    It's like the preinstalled windows thing again, I wonder if you can take the WinCE CD back for a refund?

    --

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