N-Gage 2 and the Dreamcast Irony

PowerVR is just a tile-based rendering technology, isn't it? It done quite well in the Kyro series of PC graphics cards.

These specs are quite impressive. Looking forward to seeing a new unit from Nokia.

I think the fact that the PowerVR didn't wow people was mainly due to Sony's lies and bullshit about how powerfully the "Emotion Engine" was and they should wait for as PS2 rather than buying a DreamCast.

When in fact the PS2 was not the revolution in performance over the Dreamcast that they had promised. A little bit of history repeating with the CELL processor...?

The Emotion Engine was aptly named; when people found out they'd been had and had killed Sega, they wept.

It's a pretty decent spec to say it's a mobile phone first and foremost...

Oh come on. The blame for Dreamcast's demise can only be laid squarely at the feet of SEGA.

They failed to generate excitement where Sony succeeded.

And you can forget pointing an "all lies" finger at Sony. Every hardware manufacturer creates a hype bubble and prays it holds true (or the buyers forget); don't you recall SEGA's "up to 6 billion players" Dreamcast advertising campaign? SEGA quite rightly got a stern kicking from the Advertising Standards Authority because, not only where there never going to be this number of players, but because the online service wasn't available 'til months after launch.

I'm with Config on this one. Sega underestimated Sony still after watch Sony hand Nintendo their arse on a plate. This was silly on Sega's part and the rest is history.

As for another gaming taco phone thing from Nokia I really think they are the 3DO of the 21st century. A good few games here and there but not up to competing with the big boys. I still think they should leave it and concentrate on making phones. NGage is a risky system to develop for with the disposable nature of mobile phones. Your favourite phone one minute and a year later it becomes somethin some people chuck at football players at matches.

The reason that the Dreamcast failed was many things I'll list a few of them:

-The name, Dreamcast was just a dumb name for a system

-The controller was painful to use after a while

-EA did not support it

-Marketing just wasn't there

I love the DC to death because it has some of the best games that were ever released and the fact that it was the most verisile system ever made. Everything about the system was a new experience for me, online gaming, VMU, tv based browsing and typing of the dead. Most of the games still look good today, RE:CV still looks great as does JGR,SP5, and SA2.

Yup. I don't think Dreamcast is a terrible name, but it certainly isn't up there with Megadrive and Playstation.

And I agree it had the graphical oomph to last longer than it did; there still isn't much on PS2 to rival Sould Calibur. (Yes, I know SC2 is a PS2 game, but this is one of the exceptions).

The fabulously successful NAOMI arcade hardware (7 years on and still seeing the games) uses PowerVR, as does Sammy's Atomiswave. Sega likes the technology enough to be using it for their next iteration of the NAOMI series too.

Besides, the Dreamcast didn't fail anywhere near as spectacularly as the N-Gage has. Sega shipped 10 million DCs, Nokia only fairly recently announced the shipment of a million units.


Objection! The initial hype was all there and succeeded in securing a fantastically successful launch (best ever in the staggeringly large US market at the time, for a start).

The Dreamcast failed due to stupidity on the part of many, and you cannot attribute it's death to any one set of people. For example:

- Sega failed to market effectively, and got it's wrist slapped more than once by UK watchdogs.
- Sega was boxing above it's weight in terms of the resources it had compared to other companies.
- Gamers were foolishly waiting for the PS2, whilst perfectly lovely software was there for the taking.
- Gamers didn't pick up on original titles such as Shenmue, Jet Set Radio and many other games.
- Developers shoved out almost identical Playstation and PC ports rather than actual Dreamcast games.
- Developers largely failed to take advantage of online functions (the best games were almost all from Sega).

There's a whole bunch of reasons. The main thing we need to remember is that at a similar point in the console lifecycles, the Xbox and Gamecube were around the same sales. Sega just didn't have the resources to fight on.


Oh, definitely. What's worse is that prior to Quake 3, online gaming was restricted to your home territory - European gamers could only play other European gamers, as the PAL games required Dreamarena authentification.

I didn't blame the DreamCast demise on Sony lies, just pointed out that the PowerVR didn't wow people as Sony had hyped up there Emotion Engine saying it was going to be X times more powerful, when in fact it wasn't.

But with the N-Gage 2 using it, I would think it will be a powerfully piece of kit. Probably comparable to the PSP and should wow consumers with it graphics. It should also be quite cheap to manufacture now as the chip has been around for ages which should keep the price of the unit down.

If that were the case, that would be a spectacular tirn of events. The "original" N-Gage sucked as a mobile phone.

Too true. But what a shock and disappointment I got when I played Re-Volt on the PlayStation. It was SOOOOOOOOOOO much worse than the DreamCast version, which even with a painful to use joypad was one of the most addicitve games I've ever played.

Even the PS2 version - RC Revenge??? - sucked in comparison.

I don't think that PowerVR was to blame for the failure of the DC, and as Nik said it's still being used in the latest arcade games. PowerVR itself is an effectivive technology.

Personally for me the reason the DC failed was that so many people had invested in Playstation hardware and were buying games by the ton that people didn't want to re-invest in a Dreamcast. Then the PS2 came along, they could play all their old games, and that became a natural upgrade. Also, everyone knew about the DC but no-one knew of any of the games on it.

The name "Dreamcast" was quite cool.

I think the biggest reason DC died like it did was because too much reliance was placed on innovation, and not enough on getting games on it. The PS1 and 2 stand firm on a massive catalogue; sure, if you average their value it turns out only 1 in a large number is actually good, but people still buy them.

Shenmue and Powerstone can be as original as you want, but when those are the only 2 games you can buy compared to that massive wall of software on a competitor, the average punter goes for quantity. After all, it looks so damn impressive, and they don't really know how to tell a good game. All they know is, that's a shedload of games.

The Dreamcast ended it's life in the West with 248 games in the US and over 200 in Europe. With the first US DC games arriving in September 1999 and the last in March 2002, that's an average of over 8 games released per month - pretty good, given that a year of it's active release period was spent knowing no more systems were being made.


Ugh, it was awful. I can think of only one occasion on which Sega attempted to market the system based on it's greatest strength - good games.

Click here to see said (terribly scanned) Dreamcast ad. Of course, it doesn't show gamers considering a new system what they need to know - it looks better than what they already have. Neither did the TV ads. That's the problem - if you're basing your system's prospects partially on the notion that it'll sell because it's the first next-gen system on the market, it's a good idea to let the customers know that it is next-gen.

I should dig that magazine out and re-scan that ad.

I really loved Re-Volt too. It just captured the twitchy RC handling perfectly. You've made me want to dig my DC out from the garage now, the missus is gonna love another box under the telly....

The problem with the N-Gage QD is that people compare it to other gaming platforms.
If you instead compare it to other telephones that play games, there's no comparison.
Sure I'd rather play a GBA, DS, or PSP if I had to choose a gaming platform. But if i'm trying to decide on a phone that I'm going to carry around 24 hours a day, I'll pick the N-Gage QD everytime.
Not only can I use it as my everyday phone, but I can also play some cool games on it.

Absolutely. Every other phone that plays games is a FAR better phone than the N-Gage. No comparison.



Presumably, you are as undemanding of your phone as you are of your games.

The N-Gages real point of failure was not that it was bad at games, but that it was bad as a phone. If it had been an awesome phone that had played games poorly (and there are many of those) it would not have met with so much objurgation.

If you like it, good for you. But that doesn't excuse the fact that is it a poor phone that plays poor games poorly.

Believe it or not, I saw an N-Gage owner using his unit as a phone for the first time ever today. What surprised me was my reaction - before I realised it was an N-Gage, I didn't even consider the possibility of someone using one: "Oh no, they've not made another sidetalkin' phone..."