Misc. Info

September 9th, 1999

As mentioned, congratulations to Sony on the 4^th anniversary of the PlayStation. I'm still in awe that Sony could come from nowhere just 4 years ago and totally take over the industry. Nintendo and Sega were (and are) no small players and had years of experience in gaming, yet totally missed the mark. They both got lazy on their watch, screwing their customers with so-so new hardware designed only to give a marginal improvement in graphics and gameplay. Minimize R&D cost, maximise HW and SW profits. Thank goodness for Sony!

Hats off to Sega then, for picking September 9^th to launch their new Dreamcast. Poetic almost, as today ends the PlayStation reign as the best console on the market and begins a one year head start for Sega in the next-generation console war. No matter how much of a hard core PlayStation fan you are, there is no denying that Dreamcast is better than PlayStation. Before you email me death threats, let me stress that I'm talking hardware. As of today, there is no Final Fantasy VIII, Wipeout 3,Gran Tourismo 2 or Dino Crisis for the Dreamcast. So the PlayStation still rule the software side of things, but expect the Dreamcast to do some serious catching up in the year to come.

In that year, we can only wait for the PlayStation 2 to arrive, while playing games using the last drops of performance that developers have squeezed out of the PlayStation. Hey, I look forward to titles like Dino Crisis, Wipeout 3, Gran Tourismo 2 and Elmo in Grouchland& . Of course, when looking at Shenmue and Soul Caliber you realize where things are going.

At least we're only days away from more details about the PS2. (And the DVD version of The Matrix!) A rather depressing note then from the site www.thedigitalbits.com :"Word from someone currently working as a developer for the platform, is that PS2 is only going to support single layer DVD-Video playback. It will not contain a dual focus or dual laser pickup, to enable it to play dual-layered disc formats. The reason for this, is that Sony apparently doesn't want sales of the game system to cut into sales of its stand-alone DVD players. Look for an official announcement soon." My previous fears seem to be coming true... Not good!

- Nils