Dear Future Gamer,

This is my first issue of FG and I'm very impressed with the quality of the magazine. Craig Bailey's "Sega Tally" letter is bound to have garnered a lot of response so here's my opinion.

Firstly he is very brave to make such a pretentious statement. PS2 HAS to be a success. Why? Because people will buy it on the strength of the name. Don't believe me? Look at the gaming charts. They’re full of sequels that aren't necessarily good but sell because of their illustrious history. (FIFA, anyone?)

Let's tackle his points one by one. The price? When Saturn & PlayStation first came out, they cost in excess of £300. Now they cost under £100. Dreamcast may be under £100 cheaper (allegedly) but how much will all those fancy peripherals cost? Or the
games? Besides you have to admit that £250 is a lot cheaper than a top-of-the-range PC.

The cost of development has no correlation to the price. Look at Metal Gear Solid, or Final Fantasy VII. Both have had millions spent on them in development costs, however they only cost £40. The development costs will be phenomenal with ALL games, not just PlayStation 2 games. The age of backroom programmers is over - deal with it. BUT as for Sony "trying to kill off small developers" I seriously doubt it. What will happen is that the large houses will subcontract their games out to small teams. Sony would never kill off small teams. This is the company that brought us the Yaroze remember!

Ahh, the specs. If you have that many polygons, then I suppose there might not be a need to texture them!

As for the frame rate, could you honestly say that you'd be able to see a difference? The DC has the potential to be faster, so what? The PS2 can perform complex graphical operations "on the fly". The DC can't handle this. In fact they might even end up with the same frame rate. If the DC can produce the PS2's level of ability then why haven't we seen it? Shenmue with PS2's graphical power would be outstanding!

Backwards compatibility? Right, so we can all play those Saturn games we all love like.... anyone? Oh yeah, Nights and the Sonic series. While PS2 owners will be able to play Tomb Raider 1,2,3, Gran Turismo, FFVII & FF8... need I go on?

DC will have had a year extra, Saturn had a year extra, and your point is?

Anon

FG: And while we’re killing off themes this week, this is the last PlayStation 2 versus Dreamcast letter we’ll be running. Probably. The Chat Forum’s the place to air your opinions on this subject from now on.