Dear Future Gamer,

Obviously, the Dreamcast is a powerful machine, and I believe it will achieve mild success in Europe IF they manage to get a decent software line-up ready by the time it comes out here. That was a major problem in Japan; Sonic Adventure and other titles spring to mind, but the poor initial sales were also down in part to NEC/Videologic's inability to produce the graphics chipset in enough quantity to supply the high demand. Saying that though, the Dreamcast has established itself firmly in the Japanese market.

Hopefully any problems should be ironed out before the European release. The Sony PS2 does have some phenomenal specs but the Dreamcast does have a year head start, which should give it time to establish a good, solid global fan base.

But don't forget that a new player has entered the field: Project Dolphin from Nintendo. Now, obviously this will be more powerful than both its rivals, but again software is the key. The N64 did have excellent games, Zelda and GoldenEye for instance, but there were not enough of them, so it did not achieve the success that Nintendo had hoped for.

My point is that no matter how powerful the hardware is, if the software is not there, then people will not buy it. But I feel that with the fan base that Sony have, they will win the next-gen console war.

Paul Tibbs

FG: Good points, well made. Consoles do not necessarily have 'fan-bases' although Nintendo inspire loyalty, simply because they produce the best quality (if not quantity) games. Five years ago, no-one could have predicted that Sony's debut console would be such a huge success. And let's be honest, the videogames market would have been in a considerably less healthy state had the PlayStation not existed. Who cares who wins the war? We just want to play imaginative games, whatever the platform.