dreamcast

more...

Home
A
B
C
D
d g
dachshund
dale earnhardt
daredevil
dave matthews
dealfinder
dell inspiron
dell laptop
dept 56
designer handbag
designer inspired
desktop pc
developers
dewalt cordless
diablo 2
diamond engagement
diamond solitaire
diamond wedding
diamonique
diane von
digital camcorder
dining room
dinosaurs
disaster relief
dish network
dishwasher
disney dvd
disneyland
disposable cameras
dodge charger
dodge viper
dolce gabbana
dollhouse
donald j
donations
dooney and
dooney bourke
downloads
dr. martens
dragonball
dragonfly
dreamcast
duel masters
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z

The Dreamcast (ドリームキャスト, Dorīmukyasuto^?, code-named Black Belt, Dural, Dricas, Vortex, Shark and Katana during development) is Sega's final video game console and the successor to the Sega Saturn. An attempt to recapture the console market with a next-generation system, it was designed to supersede the PlayStation and Nintendo 64. Originally released sixteen months before the PlayStation 2 (PS2), and three years before the Nintendo GameCube and the Xbox, Dreamcast was generally considered to be ahead of its time and was initially successful at restoring Sega's reputation in the gaming industry. Nevertheless, it failed to gather enough momentum before the release of the PlayStation 2 in March 2000, and Sega decided to discontinue Dreamcast the following year, withdrawing entirely from the console hardware business.

History

In 1997, the Saturn was struggling in North America, and Sega of America president Bernie Stolar pressed for Sega's Japanese headquarters to develop a new platform which eventually became Dreamcast. At the 1997 E³, Stolar made public his opinion on the Saturn with his comment, \"The Saturn is not our future\" and referred to the doomed console as \"the stillbirth\".

Design

When the time came to design the successor to the Sega Saturn, the new President of Sega, Shoichiro Irimajiri, took the unusual step of hiring an outsider, Tatsuo Yamamoto from IBM Austin, to head a \"skunk works\" group to develop the next-generation console. It soon became apparent that the existing Japanese hardware group led by Hideki Sato did not want to relinquish control of the hardware department, bringing rise to two competing designs led by two different groups.

A timeline of the development of the console's GPU may be found here.

The Japanese group led by Hideki Sato settled on an Hitachi SH4 processor with a PowerVR graphics processor developed by VideoLogic (now Imagination Technologies) and manufactured by NEC. This was originally codenamed \"White Belt\". The first Japanese prototype boards were silkscreened \"Guppy\", and the later ones \"Katana\".

Read more at Wikipedia.org