The unreleased SEGA 'Saturn 2' and The Dreamcast Story

[windycityguy]

I wanted to discuss the never-released 'Saturn 2' that was supposed to have been developed with Lockheed Martin Real3D technology.


From Next Generation November 1995 (sister magazine of EDGE):

http://i.imgur.com/4fBFl.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/Z6hbZ.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/vQK0g.jpg

'Saturn 2' could've been a new console instead of Saturn or a quick replacement
(not in place of Dreamcast, it's not of that class) or as a Saturn upgrade cart for Model 2 ports and downscaled Model 3 conversions.

Note that the Real3D/100 graphics card is not to be confused with the high-end Real3D/Pro-1000 GPUs used in Sega's Model 3 arcade board.

More on Real3D/100:

http://i.imgur.com/CfcM0.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/TYRpc.jpg

The Real3D/100 chipset could've been reduced into a single chip, much like PS1's CPU+GTE or better yet, the 3DO M2's Bulldog ASIC. If Lockheed Martin had desired to enter the consumer market in a big way (nevermind the i740), They would've been a force to be respected.

We would've had visuals like these:
http://i.imgur.com/aJqcE.jpg

The Dreamcast Story

''A do-or-die machine which will decide whether Sega stays in the
hardware biz''

Dreamcast is a system born out of Sega's darkest hour, a do-or-die
machine which will decide whether the company stays in the hardware
business. Its precursor, the 32bit Sega Saturn, had been widely
expected to conquer the world with Nintendo's own second next
generation system heavily delayed -- due to the collapse of an
alliance with Sony -- and neither Atari nor 3DO seriously threatening
mass market success.
All that changed with the November '93 announcement of the Sony
PlayStation, a system which would heavily defeat Sega's system and
become a considerable influence on how Sega designed Dreamcast.
Although there had been rumours of Sony producing a console, what came
as a heavy shock to Sega was the technical superiority of the
PlayStation. While the Saturn had been designed as perhaps the
ultimate 2D arcade machine, albeit with a substantial 3D capability,
PlayStation was totally committed to polygons.

Sega boss Hayao Nakayama angrily berated Sega's engineers for their
failings, but it was too late to totally redesign the system if the
1994 launch was too proceed. Instead, Sega added yet another processor
to an already over-complicated design. In terms of raw power, the new
Saturn was much more of a match for PlayStation, but it would never be
an easy machine to program for. The twin CPU design in particular
demanded highly specialised machine code rather than the C most
Japanese developers prefered: barely a year after Saturn's launch a
key Sega manager admitted only one in a hundred programmers would have
the skill to use the machine's full potential.

Ironically, the Saturn's Japanese launch would be Sega's best ever
performance in its home territory. Even a flawed version of Virtua
Fighting was enough to transform the company's traditional weakness in
its home territory. Overseas, however, it was to be a different
matter. Scepticism about the prospects of a CD-ROM machine succeeding
in the cost-sensitive US market meant Saturn was originally partnered
with a low-cost, cart-based system codenamed Jupiter -- principally
due to American scepticism that a CD-ROM machine could be
competitively priced. When Saturn was upgraded, Jupiter got axed in
favour of Mars, an upgrade for Sega's 16bit Mega Drive which was
supposed to protect the company's hugely lucrative US market. In fact,
32X was an unmitigated disaster, drawing vital developer support away
from Saturn and destroying the company's reputation among gamers who
found themselves with an add-on with barely a handful of games.

The Saturn debacle would cost the jobs of Sega's American and Japanese
bosses, beside reducing its US empire to a ruin running up losses of
$167 million in 1997. For any replacement machine the lessons were
clear: a single format, complete user-friendliness for developers and
a new brand -- so low had sunk the once mighty Sega name.


As soon as any console is launched, work is usually underway on a
replacement but the Saturn's troubles gave this process an unusual
urgency for Sega. By 1995, rumours surfaced that US defence
contractors Lockheed Martin Corp. were already deep into the
development of a replacement, possibly even with a view to releasing
it as a Saturn upgrade. There were even claims that during Saturn's
pre-launch panic a group of managers argued the machine should simply
be scrapped in favour of an all-new LMC design.

Sega originally entered into partnership with LMC to solve problems
with its Model 2 coin-op board, however by 1995 the relationship had
soured somewhat with the Model 3 board suffering massive delays.
Around the same time, 3DO began shopping around its 64bit M2 system.
According to informed sources, Sega's Japanese bankers had brokered an
unwritten deal whereby Matsushita would manufacture M2 units, while
Sega would concentrate on the software. M2 devkits were supplied to
Sega in early 1996, with initial work reputedly concentrating on a
Virtua Fighter 3 conversion for M2's launch.

Sega's M2 project soon fell apart however. 3DO's Trip Hawkins blamed
corporate ‘egos' for the collapse, while Sega insisted its engineers
were unconvinced M2 was the breakthrough technology they needed.
Instead, the company was increasingly preoccupied by the PC market --
unlike Nintendo, it was fully prepared to convert its games onto the
format and in mid-1995 it had entered into a partnership with PC
graphics card manufacturer nVidia. Under the terms of the deal, Sega
would supply ports of key Saturn titles exclusively for the nVidia PC
graphics card. At the time, pundits wondered if Sega might be
switching from Saturn to nVidia as its principal platform.

By 1996, this speculation was ebbing away as two clear frontrunners
emerged in the PC graphics market: VideoLogic's PowerVR and 3Dfx's
Voodoo chipsets. Sega approached both companies to be partners in two
parallel Saturn 2 projects, each of which having minimal if any
knowledge of the other. The 3Dfx-Sega of America project was codenamed
Black Belt, while the VideoLogic-Sega of Japan system was known as
Dural. Although console development is usually shrouded in total
secrecy, Saturn 2's development coincided with the rise of the
Internet and Black Belt soon became a popular topic of gossip. For a
time, many presumed Black Belt was the only new Sega system.

All this changed on July 22nd, 1997, when 3Dfx was informed them Black
Belt was cancelled. It was a shattering blow -- "Our contract with
Sega was considered to be gospel right up until we received the call,"
admitted marketing manager Chris Kramer. Two months later, 3Dfx issued
a lawsuit against Sega while blaming VideoLogic's Japanese backers,
NEC, for bringing influence to bear on a decision which would
otherwise have gone to 3Dfx. An initial burst of publicity soon gave
way to highly confidential discussions which settled the lawsuit away
from the public eye in August 1998.

For outsiders, 3Dfx had always been the favoured partner due to their
leadership in the PC market, moreover Sega let it be known the
decision to cancel wasn't due to either performance or cost reasons.
What may have been a factor is 3Dfx's very strength made it a
difficult partner for Sega, VideoLogic's second-place status obviously
made it the hungrier partner. Moreover, whereas 3Dfx see themselves as
creating a new gaming platform around their Voodoo hardware and Glide
software, VideoLogic were much more eager to use Microsoft's Direct3D
API.

Whatever the reasoning behind the decision, the PowerVR decision
further dampened excitement about a machine soon to be redubbed
Katana. In January '98, UK trade newspaper CTW ran a savage onslaught
upon the new format: "When one looks at a format owner that actually
struggles to garner interest in its latest hardware announcements, you
know it''s in trouble. From Black Belt to Dural and Katana,
journalists have leapt into headline mode, but the level of
disinterest elsewhere is palpable." Commenting upon the latest
redundancies in America and Britain, Dinsey wondered whether the
company was "giving up and trying to re-invent itself as a PC
publisher."

In May, Sega gave its response with the official announcement of its
new system, its specifications and that controversial name: Dreamcast.
The marketing campaign began with the announcement of the marketing
campaign and its $100 million budget for each territory: America,
Europe and Japan. Sega boss Shoichiro Irimajiri put the cost of
hardware development at $50-80 million, software development at
$150-200 million, which with marketing added up to half a billion
dollars.

The PR statements were suitably bullish: "Dreamcast is Sega's bridge
to world-wide market leadership for the 21st century" commented Sega
US VP Bernie Stolar. "I am confident that Dreamcast will become a de
facto standard for digital entertainment" claimed Sega chairman Isso
Okawa. However, it was at E3 itself that the tide really began to turn
for Sega with bravura software demos finally earning the machine
journalists' respect. Post E3 reports were full of adoration , as
impressed by the restoration of Sega's old self-confidence as the raw
processing power on show. Dreamcast's launch date was set as November
20th and this time all Sony can threaten is the announcement of new
hardware -- 1998 is Dreamcast's alone.

From E3 onwards, Sega orchestrated a careful drumbeat of
announcements, including the launch of the VMS unit on July 11th to
tie-in with the Godzilla movie and a much hyped August 22nd PR event
for Sega's old mascot in Sonic Adventure. In September, Sega ran an ad
showing MD Eiichi Yukawa being abused by members of the public who
preferred Sony -- and promising all would change with Dreamcast's
arrival. And so it is, everything now rests with the machine and its
software.

I was devastated when SEGA decided not to use Lockheed Martin Real3D in Dreamcast.
I mean, PowerVR2 was great, but not Real3D-great. I figure Lockheed could've come up with a cost-effective next-gen GPU beyond what was in Model 3 to compete with the other consoles of its generation.


Interestingly enough, ATI acquired the lion's share (i believe) of Real3D, which is now apart of AMD, so all is good with Real3D IP and engineers working at AMD

[KAC]

tl;dr

[windycityguy]

Originally Posted by KickAssCop

tl;dr

wait what?

[hazindu]

The Dreamcast was a good console, it's too bad Sega had already squandered too many resources and burned bridges with a few notable game publisher's.

Not to sound like a fanboy (FANBOI ALERT!!!), but fire up Quake 3 DC with a racing wheel and the Sega bass fishing controller and see what kind of control scheme you can come up with. Now fire up Gears of War and tell me how customizable your controls are...

As for the 3dfx thing, sometimes the obvious choice from a PC gamer's perspective isn't so great for a business partnership. Nintendo for example ignored all the major players and went with Artx for both the N64 and Gamecube. It wasn't until the Xbox came about that the leading PC graphics company found it's way into a console.

[hazindu]

Originally Posted by KickAssCop

tl;dr

yl;snbpt

[windycityguy]

Can we please have a proper real discussion on this, or what?

[caveman-jim]

what's this a copy-paste from?

[Akumajo]

Originally Posted by windycityguy

I wanted to discuss the never-released 'Saturn 2' that was supposed to have been developed with Lockheed Martin Real3D technology.


From Next Generation November 1995 (sister magazine of EDGE):

http://i.imgur.com/4fBFl.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/Z6hbZ.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/vQK0g.jpg

'Saturn 2' could've been a new console instead of Saturn or a quick replacement
(not in place of Dreamcast, it's not of that class) or as a Saturn upgrade cart for Model 2 ports and downscaled Model 3 conversions.

Note that the Real3D/100 graphics card is not to be confused with the high-end Real3D/Pro-1000 GPUs used in Sega's Model 3 arcade board.

The only problem with trying to discuss this "Saturn 2" is that in that same year Sega was also contracting Nvidia for the unreleased Nv2 graphics chipset, in talks or looking into the 3DO M2 chipset or IP idea.

Basically Sega was all over the place back then (they had just released the 32X among other things in 1994), if they had no spending limits they would have released that "Saturn 2", the Nvidia Nv2 based console and the 3DO M2 based console technology in the space of two to three years and Sega would have been ancient history like Acclaim alot earlier than Dreamcast.

[SubCog]

Originally Posted by hazindu

The Dreamcast was a good console, it's too bad Sega had already squandered too many resources and burned bridges with a few notable game publisher's.

And Sony had nothing to do with it.

[Akumajo]

Originally Posted by SubCog

And Sony had nothing to do with it.

What did Sony do?

[hazindu]

Originally Posted by SubCog

And Sony had nothing to do with it.

Wrong, Sony provided competition which is always a factor. Sega had sold plenty of hard ware to make software sales profitable, they had just squandered too much to stick around and compete by the time the PS2 came around.

[Phrygian]

Originally Posted by hazindu

Wrong, Sony provided competition which is always a factor. Sega had sold plenty of hard ware to make software sales profitable, they had just squandered too much to stick around and compete by the time the PS2 came around.

He's trolling Akumajo, the dude has nothing better to do on Rage3D it seems.

[windycityguy]

Originally Posted by Akumajo

The only problem with trying to discuss this "Saturn 2" is that in that same year Sega was also contracting Nvidia for the unreleased Nv2 graphics chipset, in talks or looking into the 3DO M2 chipset or IP idea.

Lordy, I forgot all about the NV2 chip for Sega.

http://www.firingsquad.com/features/nv2/

Basically Sega was all over the place back then (they had just released the 32X among other things in 1994), if they had no spending limits they would have released that "Saturn 2", the Nvidia Nv2 based console and the 3DO M2 based console technology in the space of two to three years and Sega would have been ancient history like Acclaim alot earlier than Dreamcast.

Sega had so much stuff in development, including several Saturn 2 concepts,
Nvidiia NV2, Lockheed Martin Real3D, PowerVR1, 3DFX, 3DO M2, etc. Finally, Sega settled on PowerVR2 .

[Akumajo]

Originally Posted by windycityguy

Lordy, I forgot all about the NV2 chip for Sega.

http://www.firingsquad.com/features/nv2/




Sega had so much stuff in development, including several Saturn 2 concepts,
Nvidiia NV2, Lockheed Martin Real3D, PowerVR1, 3DFX, 3DO M2, etc. Finally, Sega settled on PowerVR2 .

Cool that listed most of the known stuff... I can only give you my opinion though since I already thought about this and came to a conclusion years ago but its hard to find Sega fans to talk to who were just just all of a sudden Sega fans when the Dreamcast was out.

Basically the Saturn 2 as you describe it would have failed, I know I would have bought it but it would have failed.

Sega was making alot of their money from the US Genesis success, they had a decent market share in Japan and Europe but those were different times and the US was what was really fueling up Sega in terms of profits.

It was also the same place were they were losing with all those lawsuits...

Saturn was very successful in Japan, Virtua Fighter 1 alone drove sales since people could train at home and then go and pass the smack down in the arcades, that was a win win for Sega and it grew with massive support. Support that they would have screwed up with Saturn 2 and that they actually DID SCREW UP with Dreamcast rushed to market and prematurely pulling the plug on Saturn.

So my conclusion is the only way Sega would have had success is if they would have

Prevented the 32X from every being approved.

Also postpone or delay or restructure replan the Saturn to target the Nvidia Nv2, not because of ZOMG Nvidia!!11 but because that Nv2 chip was going to be a second generation revision or re-engineering of Nv1 for back in the day and that would have been the optimal quads polygon based graphics chipset while also benefiting from better 2d capability as well as benefiting from using custom dual SH3 CPUs at either 66Mhz or higher clock speeds for a 1996 launch.

This would mean that from 1992 to 1995 Sega would have to be focused only on and I mean ONLY on MegaDrive/CD aka Genesis/CD software development while the arcade divisions would worry about Model 1/2 and 3 software development.

Such a 1996 Nvidia Nv2-dual SH3-Saturn would have been perfect for 1:1 or better home versions of Model 2 arcade games and overall a major challenge to anything M2 could have been.

Also thats another thing, no wasting time dealing with M2, with PC game ports and divisions, etc all of that stuff costs money which Sega was spending.

Basically the idea is that Sega would have taken a focused and conservative approach to try and match whatever Nintendo was making instead of trying to come out years ahead thinking they were going to have the market to themselves which is really the problem here with Sega, they kept approving these project in the hopes of thinking they would have and maintain marketshare instead of losing it.

3DFX had alot of mindshare from magazine writters being subject to alot of the hype and repeating it, it was not an end all be all, the PowerVR2 chipset pretty much surpassed the Model 3 in terms of raw performance and capabilities on a check list, what screwed Sega was removing the idea of a Dual SH4 cpu set up where one CPU would have driven the software transform and lighting while the other does other tasks and capitalized on the years of experience Sega's dev teams had working and making progress on Saturn, remember Shenmue was programmed on a Saturn first, not a Dreamcast.

There were also alot of screw ups with the 3dFX contract being leaked to the press prematurely which was part of the real reason for Sega to switch to Videologic at the time, basically the project was not so secret and there are just too many screw ups and factors to ignore as to why Sega was losing money in 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, etc.

[windycityguy]

^I highly doubt the NV2 would've been able to handle arcade-exact ports of Model 2 games, otherwise Sega would've released it. It must have been much-inferior to 3DO M2. Sega and Nvidia back then, hmm, maybe the NV3 / Riva 128 would've done decent Model 2 conversions. People underestimate just how powerful the Martin Marietta Model 2 board was.

Otherwise, great post

[SpeckledJim]

Jesus, the 32X. What a nightmare that was. I must have gone through a dozen units before getting one that would work reliably. All the pain of the Saturn's dual SH2 CPUs, with none of the video hardware to make up for it.

[Hidavi]

SEGA was just bad at engineering. They kept coming up with poor designs and then trying to patch on upgrades like no one would notice what a shitty job they were doing.

[windycityguy]

Originally Posted by Hidavi

SEGA was just bad at engineering.

That's why they turned to General Electric Aerospace / Martin Marietta / Lockheed Martin for arcade hardware.

They kept coming up with poor designs and then trying to patch on upgrades like no one would notice what a shitty job they were doing.

For the home market, yes. It's a shame they didn't turn to the military industrial complex for home hardware as well as arcade.

[windycityguy]

Here's an interesting USENET post from 1996 about Lockheed Real3D/100 and 3DFX Voodoo Graphics:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp....e=source&hl=en

First, let me start off by saying I am going to be buying a Voodoo card.
For low end comsumer grade flight sims and such, the Voodoo looks like
about the best thing available. Second, I am not necessarily responding
to just you, because there seems to be a hell of a lot of confusion
about Lockheed Martin's graphics accelerators. I have been seeing posts
all over the place confusing the R3D/100 with the AGP/INTEL project that
L.M. is working on. The R3D/100 is *NOT* the chipset that is being
developed for the AGP/INTEL partnership.

However, since your inference is that the Voodoo is faster than the
R3D/100, I have to say that you are totally dead wrong. While the specs
say that the Voodoo is *capable* of rendering a higher number of pixels
per second, or the same number of polygons per second as the R3D/100,
the specs fail to mention that these are not real world performance
figures any you probably will not ever see the kind of performance that
3Dfx claims to be able to acheive. This does *not* mean that the Voodoo
is not a good (its great actually) card, just that the game based 3D
accelerator companies (all of them) don't tell you the whole story.


The Voodoo uses a polygon raster processor. This accelerates line and
polygon drawing, rendering, and texture mapping, but does not accelerate
geometry processing (ie vertex transormation like rotate and scale).
Geometry processing on the Voodoo as well as every other consumer (read
game) grade 3D accelerator. Because the cpu must handle the geometry
transforms and such, you will never see anything near what 3Dfx,
Rendition, or any of the other manufacturers claim until cpu's get
significantly faster (by at least an order of magnitude). The 3D
accelerator actually has to wait for the cpu to finish processing before
it can do its thing.


I have yet to see any of the manufacturers post what cpu was plugged
into their accelerator, and what percentage of cpu bandwidth was being
used to produce the numbers that they claim. You can bet that if it was
done on a Pentium 200, that the only task the cpu was handling was
rendering the 3D model that they were benchmarking. For a game,
rendering is only part of the cpu load. The cpu has to handle flight
modelling, enemy AI, environmental variables, weapons modelling, damage
modelling, sound, etc, etc.


The R3D includes both the raster accelerator (see above) and a 100 MFLOP
geometry processing engine. Read that last line again. All geometry
processing data is offloaded from the system cpu and onto the R3D
floating point processor, allowing the cpu to handle more important
tasks. The Voodoo does not have this, and if it were to add a geometry
processor, you would have to more than double the price of the card.


The R3D also allows for up to 8M of texture memory (handled by a
seperate texture processor) which allows not only 24 bit texturemaps
(RGB), but also 32bit maps (RGBA) the additional 8 bits being used for
256 level transparency (Alpha). An addtional 10M can be used for frame
buffer memory, and 5M more for depth buffering.


There are pages and pages of specs on the R3D/100 that show that in the
end, it is a better card than the Voodoo and other consumer and
accelerator cards, but I guess the correct question is, for what? If
the models that are in your scene are fairly low detailed (as almost all
games are - even the real cpu pigs like Back to Bagdhad), then the R3D
would be of little added benefit over something like the Voodoo.
However, when you are doing scenes where the polys are 2x+ times more
than your typical 3D game, the R3D really shines. The R3D is and always
was designed for mid to high end professional type application, where
the R3D/1000 (much much faster than the 100) would be too expensive, or
just plain overkill. I've seen the 1000 and I have to say that it rocks!
I had to wipe the drool from my chin after seeing it at Siggraph (We're
talking military grade simulation equipment there boys, both in
performance and price!)


Now then, as I mentioned before, I'm going be buying the Voodoo for my
home system, where I would be mostly playing games. But, I am looking
at the R3D for use in professional 3D application. More comparible 3D
accelerators would not be Voodoo, Rendition based genre, but more along
the lines of high end GLINT based boards containing Delta geometry
accelerator chips (and I don't mean the low end game base Glint chips,
or even the Permedia for that matter), or possibly the next line from
Symmetric (Glyder series), or Intergraph's new professional accelerator
series.


Ted K.
Shadowbox Graphics
Chicago - where being dead isn't a voting restriction.

Extremely interesting and well written IMHO.

[windycityguy]

Anyone wish to discuss the Saturn 2 or The Dreamcast Story articles further?

[mabran]

I was working as a manager at a babbages software as I had six days off in my military job at a time so it was a great way to supplement the government paycheck

Sega shot themselves in the foot. The genesis was a great console that they tried to accessorize with hardware upgrades one after the other in too short of a timeframe (SegaCD, 32x, SegaCDX etc...)

They should have just released a worthy successor instead of wasting the resources on existing hardware upgrades that in the console space never sell successfully with the only exception being the Kinect for the 360.

The Saturn was supposed to be out in the fall of that year and I remember the day the saturns showed up months before launch and was told they are now released, with no marketing, on TV, Print or anything and we were told to sell them. With the 32x being out for only a few months and with all the other upgrades the genesis had in the recent times back then it was a hard sell.

Sega just decided to release it early with no notice and it was a hard sell. Developers were ticked at the constant change of platform and many didn't support the Saturn even though it was the genesis replacement paltform.

Sony took advantage of the bad press garnered by Sega and in one of the only good marketing campaigns they have done (since they can't market to save their lives these days) The original Playstation reaped the benefits.

3DO was an intersting piece but the $700 pricetage took a month to sell 3 units and the game support just wasn't there so it was an even harder sell then the Saturn. Saturns sold ok but we never ran out of stock.

The hardware I think was not the problem for developer support, rather the lack of consistent platform from Sega so they didn't want to sink money into developement on a platform that might be gone in 6 months.

By the time the Dreamcast came out, Sega burned many bridges and there was always rumor that Sony paid to keep EA from developing Madden for the Dreamcast which as sad as it is the yearly full price roster update sells hardware. Sega went the 2k sports route which was better than madden in every way IMO but was missing the madden name.

I was a fan of the PowerVR tech and still have a functional Matrox M3D for my PC that still get's used in my legacy gaming box. I knew what to expect from the dreamcast and was far more excited for that platform than the PS2.

Sadly Sega has fallen to obscurity compared to the old days. They did it to themselves much like Atari did. Now both companies are shadows of their former selves.

[mabran]

Almost forgot.

3DFX as opposed to PowerVR, I went the PowerVR route because at the time I wasn't limited to 640x480 (or was it 800x600) as one was limited with the original Voodoo boards and I was a fan of the tile tech used in the PCX2.

You needed two Voodoo boards in SLI to get any higher res which at the time was too costly for the benefit on the small monitors of the day.

I remember going 1024x768 on the PCX2 but was limited to 640x480(or800x600) with the voodoo. Back in the day 640x480 was the god resolution on the PC gaming side and it felt so awsome to go higher than that in a 3D game.

Now Voodoo had better marketing and support from the dev community so it survived a bit longer until Nvidia and ATI started making the all in one 2d/3d accelerators that we have today. 3DFX started losing install base and Glide started losing out to Direct3D as it worked on all platforms. It wasn't long until 3DFX made the banshee all in one card whch wasn't bad but compared to offerings from ATI and NV generally stunk in direct3d.

the 3dfx nail in the coffin though was deciding to be the sole distributor for their hardware and eliminating third party brands. It was all downhill from there.

I feel so old now

[monkeyx]

Originally Posted by hazindu

The Dreamcast was a good console, it's too bad Sega had already squandered too many resources and burned bridges with a few notable game publisher's.

This is also before the Halo/Modern Warfare era. Back then sports games were king on American consoles and EA not producing any sports titles on the Dreamcast was part of the deathblow for that system.