Dear Future Gamer,

In response to Shane Bluemel's letter in FG22... Shane states that no machine has ever been more successful than its predecessor. Oh no? Master System - Mega Drive, ZX81 - Spectrum, MSX - PlayStation (okay, that's a little facetious, but you get my drift).

My point is that a sweeping statement such as that is unhelpful and not pertinent to the current debate. As John Carberry rightly stated, the market has changed beyond all recognition from just three years ago. I've just written my dissertation on that very subject and I don't have to tell you that Sony has given the games console mass-market appeal - this benefits all the companies in the industry. It means that the next generation of consoles - including Dreamcast if Sega can do some nifty marketing - are going do better than their forebears. Dreamcast will outperform the Saturn (at least in the UK) and Next Generation PlayStation will do better than the first one.

Shane also stated that the Mega Drive sells better worldwide than the PlayStation. This surprises me, but if it is true, the sales are presumably in countries where the PlayStation has not yet been introduced - hardly fair, is it?

The Game Boy does sell better than the PlayStation even in Japan, but I do not feel that this is down to software support as much as the fact that it controls 98 per cent of the hand-held console market - there is literally no substitute. The Game Boy is the best selling console on the planet, but it got there mainly on the strength of Tetris - one of the greatest games of all time, not Mickey Mouse or the rest of their games. Don't get me wrong - I love the Game Boy and think it deserves every success - Nintendo have totally cornered the market in that sector. If someone wants to play games on the move there is only one choice. But stating it sells better than the PlayStation because of the software is, in my opinion, erroneous.

The PlayStation was not designed by Nintendo. Sony were originally designing a CD-ROM add-on for the SNES, and started to design a console of their own that would use this technology and also play SNES games. What happened next seems to be the subject of some conjecture - blame has been laid at both parties doors - but the end result was that Nintendo broke off the deal and announced they were developing the drive with Philips. Sony were left with two years worth of work which they eventually realised as the PlayStation.

Sony will not make the NGPS 'overly expensive': they've got enough experience never to let that happen. I personally will be buying a Dreamcast - I agree with D Ulrich on this. But NGPS's backward compatibility is something special - people will already have a library of games to play on their machine under the telly, and that will persuade people - mark my words. It will also enable developers to carry on producing PS games, but whether that is a good thing or not is debatable.

One last point. Is Microsoft backing really that desirable? I don't want my console crashing like my PC...

Jaffa

FG: Shane certainly stirred things up didn't he? Shall we move on to something else now?