September 9, 1999

STATE OF THE ART

Dreamcast Is a Toy, Yes, but It's a PC at Heart

By PETER H. LEWIS

ega's new Dreamcast video game console, which goes on sale in the United States Thursday, is the first of the next-generation home game machines to arrive on these shores. As a game machine its power is unrivaled, except by high-end personal computers costing more than 10 times as much, and it makes the graphics on the current market leader, the Sony Playstation, appear grainy and jerky. The Dreamcast is the closest thing to an arcade-quality game experience you can get at home.





Stuart Goldenberg

Oddly, it comes from the box with Internet software but no complete games, which have to be purchased separately.

Some people say that inexpensive, Internet-enabled game consoles like the Dreamcast, along with its future rivals, the Sony Playstation II and Nintendo's Project Dolphin (also known as N2000), will become an alternative to PC's for millions of people who want to connect to the Net through TV screens.

Of course, people who are already on the Net might be alarmed by the prospect of millions of Internet newbies whose common bond appears to be a love of Sonic the Hedgehog (Sega's most popular game character) and an ability to type with their thumbs.

It would be a mistake, however, to dismiss these new game consoles as frivolous.

While the Sega Dreamcast clearly has the pedigree of a game machine, it has the digital genetics of a computer. Besides the built-in modem, it has a powerful microprocessor, fancy 3-D graphics and audio chip sets, a special kind of CD-ROM drive that also plays audio compact disks, 26 megabytes of various kinds of system memory, and -- surprise -- even a custom version of Microsoft's Windows CE.

All play and no work makes the Dreamcast a very dull toy. Windows CE makes the Dreamcast a very interesting device because it means that thousands of software developers could create applications for it if the Dreamcast gains a large enough following.

The Dreamcast console has four high-speed ports on the front, and it comes with a single game controller that plugs into one of them. Other options for these ports include extra controllers, keyboards, steering wheels, force-feedback joysticks, microphones, guns and fishing reels that jerk in step with the action on screen and, down the road, digital cameras and other smart devices.

For those who get excited about such things, the controller has a slot for an optional Tamagotchi-like smart-card device called a visual memory unit.

A serial port on the back can work with a printer or a storage device like a Zip drive, although Sega would have been smarter to include a Universal Serial Bus, or U.S.B., port instead.

The Dreamcast is built around a 128-bit microprocessor. The current market leaders for game consoles, the Sony Playstation and the Nintendo 64, use 64-bit processors. Basically, that means the 200-MHz Dreamcast chip can process twice the information its rivals can in any tick of the clock, enabling programmers to add sophisticated software features like the ability to recognize and exploit patterns in the user's playing style.



Dreamcast could be Sega's last chance to stay competitive with Sony and Nintendo.

In other words, the system can adapt to give the player a greater challenge over time, a trait shared by some newer PC games.

Once upon a time, about five years ago, Sega sold more game machines than Sony and Nintendo combined. But for a number of reasons, few of them technical, Sega botched the introduction of its ill-fated Saturn system, Dreamcast's predecessor, allowing Sony and Nintendo to take over. Today Sega has less than a 2 percent share of the market, said Kelly Henry, an analyst with the International Data Corporation.

Video game players appear willing to embrace whatever system gives them the most realistic thrills, and for the next year at least, that will be Dreamcast. Sega said more than 250,000 Dreamcast systems had been ordered in advance of Thursday's nationwide rollout, and the company expects to sell 1 million systems by the end of this year. Even so, Sega has no illusions about toppling the market leaders. At best, the Dreamcast will keep Sega competitive for a while.

It is no exaggeration to say that Dreamcast could be Sega's last chance to stay competitive with Sony, Nintendo and maybe even Microsoft, which has been exploring the idea of creating its own video console machine. (Microsoft is already one of the largest makers of computer games and game peripherals.)

But if Sega has a year's head start on Sony and Nintendo in the 128-bit processor race, that also means that the Playstation II and Dolphin systems will be a year more advanced when they finally arrive in 2000.

Sony has already demonstrated an Internet-enabled Playstation II prototype that is more powerful than Sega's Dreamcast while remaining backward-compatible with current Play station games. Nintendo's N2000 Dolphin system, like the Playstation II, will double as a DVD movie player.

Sega says its Dreamcast system is designed to take advantage of new technologies that will be developed in the next year or two, but that may be whistling in the dark.

A year from now, when Sony and Nintendo release their new systems, Dreamcast could be toast unless Sega can lock its customers into the Internet.

The new Sega system has been transformed by the Internet. When attached to a phone line, the Dreamcast console can be used as an Internet terminal. Users can send and receive E-mail, participate in chat groups or get game-playing tips on the Sega Dreamcast Online Gaming Network and browse the Web. Sega says Dreamcast users can connect through any Internet service provider, but it lists AT&T Worldnet as its preferred service and includes a Worldnet software disk.

Basic AT&T service will cost $9.95 a month for 10 hours of Internet access, $19.95 for 150 hours of access and $21.95 a month for unlimited access. Those who sign up for either of the more expensive plans will get a free Dreamcast keyboard, for no-thumbs typing.

One thing Dreamcast owners will not be able to do, however, is play games against one another over the Internet, a rather astonishing lapse in an otherwise impressive system.

On-line games are one of the Internet's most popular activities.

A Sega spokesman said the company would offer on-line competitive games in "the next 12 months or so." Until then, Dreamcast users can only taunt one another with E-mail and chat. There's not much sport in that.

At some point, however, the Dreamcast and its game-console rivals will emerge as network information devices, ready to slug it out with low-cost PC's, set-top boxes like Web TV, smart telephones and other information appliances. Let the games begin.



State of the Art is published on Thursdays. Click here for a list of links to other columns in the series.

Peter H. Lewis at lewis@nytimes.com welcomes your comments and suggestions.