Dear Future Gamer,

Having been a Dreamcast fan since the time it was being rumoured about I feel that I must comment on PlayStation 2.

Everyone must surely remember how difficult the Saturn was to develop for, this was one of the things that killed it off. I suspect this pushed development costs up quite a bit as well. Compared to the Saturn the PlayStation was a very easy piece of kit to make a game on.

The Dreamcast, however, is quite possibly the easiest console ever to make a game on and because of this development costs are very low. Also it can be manufactured very cheaply. The PlayStation 2 is the complete opposite. It is very difficult to get the most out of this so-called super-console, so development costs will surely rise to that of a Hollywood blockbuster. Added to which, it can't be manufactured very cheaply with the price tag that Sony are talking about putting on it!

It seems, then, that the Dreamcast and PlayStation 2 are the opposites of their predecessors. With this in mind, don't Sony realise what they're getting themselves into? They're the ones creating another Saturn, NOT Sega, although having said this I don't understand why companies are jumping off the Dreamcast bandwagon, namely EA. At least there won't be any rubbish football games on Dreamcast then!

Craig Bailey

FG: Though the PlayStation 2 may be harder to programme, I don't think it's going to deter developers. Sony will make libraries available to the developers to make their job easier, and once a development house has got the machine to do something impressive, all the other developers will follow suit. The Dreamcast is going to be a lot easier to develop for, but it's whether any of the games produced are actually good fun to play that will determine its success. Sega have been smart though, by making it so easy to code for, and yes, Sony may well find it harder than before but they'll be well aware of this and will have contingency plans in place.