Introduction

Sega's New Hope

In recent years, Sega has been considered a company without a vision, incapable of producing an exciting gaming console. After the failure of the 32X upgrade for the Genesis, and the Sega Saturn, Sega today holds a trifling 1% market share in the United States; this will change on September 9th.

This Thursday, Sega will officially be launching their Dreamcast console in the United States. Refusing to make the same hardware mistakes of the past such the Saturn's embarrassingly underpowered 3D graphics, Sega has instead enlisted the technological wizardry of NEC and VideoLogic. For the CPU, Sega chose Hitachi's SuperH-4 RISC CPU. For the audio and optical storage technology, the specialists at Yamaha were called upon.

The Dreamcast next-generation console

Bill Gates to the table

The final powerhouse partnership was with Microsoft, who brought Windows CE, the DirectX toolkit, and WebTV for dessert. Not being content with merely a gaming machine, Sega has also bundled a 56K V.90 modem, making the leap from game machine to entertainment machine. This exotic blend of technology from PowerVR, Hitachi, Yamaha, and Microsoft and Sega gaming can be had for a mere $199, an unbeatable deal.

But, the S3 Savage 2000 and NVIDIA GeForce 256 are less than two months away for PC fans, and Sony's Next Generation Playstation will be coming to the US sometime next summer -- does Sega stand a chance? More importantly, is the Dreamcast worth buying? Cast aside all your doubts about Sega - this is one impressive machine.