I haven't been on here all that much lately. I've been playing Baten Kaitos Origins (SOOOOO good) but I was in a discussion earlier where Microsoft and Dreamcast came up on completely different occasions that had nothing to do with eachother. Still, it brought this back to my mind. On our good ol' system wars, comparing Xbox 360 to Dreamcast was a popular topic starting about a year ago. Some people, at this point, still don't understand why Xbox 360 is starting to rake in a lot of sales. But there is a BIG difference. In fact, several differences.

1 (probably most importantly): Xbox had a stable fanbase, a group of Halo-lovers who wouldn't go away any time soon. Saying that Saturn had anything of the sort would give it WAY too much credit. In fact, I doubt the average gamer even knows when Saturn was realeased, maybe even what system it was going up against. Sega had an extremely small fanbase going into Dreamcast, they were doomed from the start.

2: There is a very big difference between the release date of Dreamcast and the release date of Xbox 360. You see, Xbox 360 was released in what was the last strong holiday season of each system from the generation we're leaving. A lot of people said, "bah...too early" and it was too early, but only by a little bit. Over the course of the year, Xbox 360 sales have steadily risen. Microsoft really does have the head start they wanted, now, just like Sony had last generation, not like Sega. Sega, instead of releasing a "next gen system early" showed a blatant disregard for going head-to-head with its competitors. Dreamcast was released when the current-gen systems weren't dying, but were instead in their prime. No one was going to jump ship to the next generation at that point.

3. Titles that appeal to the consumer. We're not talking good games, Dreamcast had plenty of those. We're talking games that would appeal to the mainstream. PSO? No. Skies of Arcadia? No. Sonic Adventure? Yes, but not enough. Xbox 360 doesn't have games like that, Xbox 360 has games that appeal to the masses.

So, as you can see, there are big differences between Xbox 360 and Dreamcast. I'd actually compare the release of Xbox 360 more to the release of PS2 than to Dreamcast. Personally, and I'm not a fanboy, I believe that Microsoft will be on top this generation. An Xbox 360 has already become a status symbol, which was what made PS2 so successful in the first place. Still, when it comes to something like the Wii, you never know.