Dear Future Gamer,

As a professional games developer I have a few thoughts on the PS2 Vs Dreamcast debate. From where I'm sitting (which is just beside a Dreamcast dev' kit) the Dreamcast looks like an extremely powerful console.

The Dreamcast has had some really shoddy games released which were rushed out for the launch, but when you look at Sonic, although it's certainly not a classic, the graphical power behind it shines through.

From our benchmarks we reckon that it's quite a bit faster than 2 voodoo II's in SLI (scan line interleave) mode, the dev' kit is instantly accessible and the support from Sega is very good.

The problem as I see it is that publishers have already written the console off. It seems that they have been caught up in the 'PS2 is the fastest hardware in the universe' media frenzy.

To sum up, the Dreamcast is a very good console, but the publishers' attitude towards it could prove to be its downfall.

Robert Anderberg

FG: It's very heartening to hear that "the dev' kit is instantly accessible and the support from Sega is very good". This will go a long way towards getting the machine accepted. Publishers may well be swept away by the PlayStation 2 hype but as I'm sure you'll agree, their allegiances change quicker than you can say 'cheque book' and all it's going to take is a couple of really good games - that sell well - to convince them to support the format. Let's hope that's what's going to happen.