> > Wasn't it supposed to be difficult to develop for, or something? That never helps a > > system's success. > > Nope. They went to a lot of effort to make it feel very similar to the then-popular > standard of developing for 3dfx GLIDE. By contrast, PS2 used an architecture very > similar to Sega's own Model 2 board which required writing DSP assembly to draw a > single triangle on the screen. Developers complained bitterly, and a lot went with > Criterion's Renderware engine to avoid the issue (most famously GTA 3/Vice City/San > Andreas), but even niche PS2 titles sold well given how huge the hardware installed > base was. > > Specs was kind of a wash. PS2 could do more geometery detail and had a little more > CPU grunt, Dreamcast could do more texture detail and SH-series code compiles to > about 2/3rds the size of MIPS so you had more RAM available. But PS2 had more RAM, > period. > > If it was hard to develop for, it wouldn't have been wildly popular in arcades. > There's a *lot* of Naomi (and later Atomiswave) titles.
Did we ever see the best of the Dreamcast, Shenmue 2 was pretty but still looked outdated compared to Xbox the PS2 titles. I think the Dreamcast hardware was just outdated by the PS2 and Xbox to put it simply, as you would expect, as they were released after. The Naomi 2 games didn't look outdated but they used 2 boards, Initial D stage 3 everything looked fantastic except for the rocks, something had to give i guess to make the games not look outdated to those without a keen eye.
I am the original retro game dork.
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