The DC VS PS2 article doesn't work anymore...
http://www.dcemulation.org/article-ps2vsdc.htm
DC VS PS2
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scuzzo84
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DjB
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There you go mate. I saved it ages ago 
PS2 Vs. DC
I remember when the PS2 was first announced and the technical specifications that were bandied about at that time: 75 million polygons/second, unlimited streaming texture potential, 48GB/s of memory bandwidth, and so on. It wasn't long after this that technology analysts began to question Sony's numbers.
Polygon Performance
The 75 million number was reduced to 66 million. Afterwards, it was admitted that these PS2 numbers were a peak performance figure for flat -shaded, identically shaped polygons. Unfortunately, the image of the PS2 as some sort of polygon monster had already become firmly entrenched in the minds of the mainstream media.
Sega chose a more conservative approach, which is in keeping with their new business philosophy - to regain the trust and confidence of gamers. Since its introduction two years ago, Sega has never mislead gamers about the Dreamcast's power. 3+ million polygons is all that Sega ever claims, even though new games like Test Drive: LeMans push closer to five million in 3D scenes loaded with effects.
The truth is that the PS2 has never displayed more than 2-3 million polys in a game. The main problem is a memory one. With only a 4MB VRAM cache on its GS graphics processor, the PS2 is severely limited in what it can achieve on screen. While it's true that 32MB of main memory and the fairly powerful Emotion Engine processor are capable of producing in the neighborhood of 10-12 million textured and lit polygons/second, the poor design of the GS and its small pipeline to main memory restrict the final number to roughly half of that.
What? You mean, regardless of the power of the EE processor and the large amount of available memory, the PS2 is still only capable of displaying 5-6 million on-screen polygons? The answer, unfortunately, is yes. By contrast, the Dreamcast has only 16 MB of main memory and a processor that is only capable of one-half the number of polygons/second - ie. 5- 6 million - but the whole point of the exercise is to get these onto your television. An intelligent memory saving technique known as differed rendering, coupled with the PowerVR2DC graphics chip's hardware texture compression abilities, allow the Dreamcast to display all of its generated polygons.
To better understand the PS2's limitations and the Dreamcast's strengths, you need only look at the available video memory for your answer. While the DC has 8MB of VRAM, the PS2 has only 4MB of VRAM. The main problem arises because a polygon takes up roughly 40 bytes of RAM. When you have 5 million of them in a given second, this amounts to 5 million/60fps = 83,333 polygons in a give frame of animation. If each of these polygons uses 40 bytes of VRAM, you will use 3.33 MB displaying these 5 million PPS. This doesn't leave the PS2 much room for it's framebuffer which uses around 1.2MB just to display the end data, not to mention that you still need to leave room for textures to put on those polygons.
Now, there are a few tricks which will allow the PS2 to display 5-6 million PPS, even though it only has a 4MB VRAM cache. One of them is to update the cache more frequently than once a second. But, there are other bandwidth limitations that prevent this from happening more than two or three times per second and the net result is that the PS2 is still limited to 5- 6 million PPS.
Here is a table which summarizes the polygon performance of both next- generation machines:
System Processor Stage Graphics Stage Best Example**
PS2 EE + 32MB
12 million PPS* GS + 4MB
6 million PPS* Madden NFL 2001
2 million PPS*
DC SH4 + 16MB
6 million PPS* PVR2DC + 8MB
5 million PPS* Ferrari F355 Challenge
3 million PPS*
* All polygons are textured and lit and represent peak performance
** Only games available right now were considered
Unfortunately, this isn't the PS2's only shortcoming. The reason I emphasize polygon performance at all is because these number have become the defacto standard for judging a console's power, when in fact they tell less than half the story. The main disadvantage of this expensive architecture is it's poor texturing ability.
Texturing Performance
The way texturing works is simple. Polygons and texture data arrive into video memory, textures are applied to the polygons and the result is displayed on screen. Most PC users are used to games with 16MB or more of texture data. A diehard Quake III player might have a setup capable of delivering 32MB of textures during the game. 32MB? But the PS2 and DC only have 4MB and 8MB of VRAM respectively. How can they hope to compete? The answer is that consoles do not hold all of a scene's texture data in memory at once. Usually, the data is streamed over the bus from main memory in a continuous manner.
The Dreamcast is a wonderful texturing beast, due in large part to the efficiency of the PVR2DC's graphics methodology. Two things help the PVR2DC - hardware texture decompression and infinite planes deferred rendering. Unlike the PS2's GS graphics processor, the PVR2DC is capable of decompressing textures on the fly. Thus, DC programmers usually take 20-25MB of texture data and compress it at a 5:1 (sometimes 8:1) ratio to reduce the amount of texture data to only 4 or 5MB. Then, the texture data is sent over the bus to the PVR2DC which simply decompresses the data at the moment of rendering into it's original huge size.
By contrast, the PS2's GS processor has no ability to decompress textures on the fly. This means that all texture data must flow over the relatively small pipeline between main memory and the GS 4MB VRAM cache, at it's original large size. Currently, this fact has limited PS2 games to only around 10 MB of texture data/frame, and this is why the buildings look so similar in Ridge Racer 5. Lack of variety in texturing has made most PS2 games look extremely plain when compared to Dreamcast games like Sonic Adventure, Shenmue, and even Draconus: Cult of the Wyrm.
Moreover, the PVR2DC belongs to the only processor family on the market that uses deferred rendering to texture only those polygons which are facing the gamer in any given frame. Other graphics chips must texture the backs of polygons as well as the front facing polygons. The net effect is to reduce the amount of texturing that the DC has to perform in a given scene by a factor of two or three depending on the complexity of the scene. The greater the scene complexity, the more you see the benefits of deferred rendering. This is why you never see any really large free-roaming 3D games on the PS2. Crazy Taxi, Ecco the Dolphin, and Shenmue are simply not possible on the PS2, because it doesn't have deferred rendering.
Test Drive LeMans on the Dreamcast.
GT3 on the PS2.
Here is another table which summarizes texturing performance for bother machines:
Texture Data Streaming Capacity System Capacity Decompressed Texturing Ability Best Example*
PS2 10MB/frame (Main Memory -> GS Memory) 10MB/frame on screen Dead or Alive 2: Hardcore*
DC 5MB/frame (Main Memory -> VRAM 25MB/frame on screen Shenmue, Ecco the Dolphin*
* Only games available right now were considered
These two performance measure give you a pretty good idea of why the PS2 is, technically-speaking, a poor hardware design. The biggest problem of all with this architecture, however, is the difficulty that development houses are having extracting reasonable performance out of the machine. All the power in the world under the hood, doesn't do anyone much good if the games don't look good.
Development Environment
The PS2 shipped to developers with incomplete kits last year. By contrast, Sega has been giving excellent support to developers both large and small. Most DC developers are using 5th generation development kits, known as Set 5 Dev Kits. Sony mistakenly made the assumption that third-party PS2 developers would want bare bones development kits so they could program the hardware directly like they have during the last days of the PSX. Unfortunately, key features that are very hard to implement, like anti-aliasing to remove jagged edges from on-screen polygons have not yet surfaced.
Developers have responded to these PS2 programming challenges in a number of ways. Some developers like THQ (Summoner) have used a form of CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) blending to fake the effects that true anti- aliasing would offer. This is something which the DC has had for over two years, but unlike the DC CRT method, the PS2 method results in washed out, blurry textures. Tekken Tag Tournament is the perfect US launch title example. While they have eliminated the jagged edges which plague the Japanese version, the end result is that all of the textures in the game seem blurry or washed out. Hardly what I would call revolutionary for a next-generation console.
Another developmental problem, which is the reason for the jaggies in the first place, is serious lack of kit functions that will intelligently enable developers to overcome some of the limitations of the small size of the GS VRAM cache. While all Dreamcast games run at 640x480 resolution, many PS2 games only utilitize a 640x240 field- rendered display which fakes a 640x480 display. Bad jaggies are the result, and these need to be hidden through some form of anti-aliasing (AA, not yet available), or by using the CRT method described above, with all its unintended consequences.
Moreover, the EE processor is actually three separate CPUs in one core. Most developers, for lack of proper tools, are using only one third of the EE's processing ability, because both vector units (VP1 & VP2) are too hard to program. Certainly future games will take advantage of these units, thereby freeing the main CPU to implement some fairly nice AI routines, but the cost of developing these techniques has become enormous - something which I will outline in the next article.
The sad fact is that only a few development houses like EA have been able to extract reasonable next-generation performance out of the PS2 architecture. Even Namco and Konami, the kings of PSX development during the 32 bit era, are having a hard time getting more than 2-3 million PPS out of what is supposed to be the end-all of gaming machines. The fact of the matter is that Namco's 18 month old Soul Calibur on Dreamcast looks worlds better than the newly released Tekken Tag Tournament on PS2. Not very impressive compared to the promises that have been made by Sony and it's cabal of industry sycophants.
Overall
The Dreamcast is the best machine on the market. Tomorrow nothing will have changed. Technically speaking, nothing on the PS2 comes close to the beauty of Shenmue or Ecco, the speed and power of F355 Challenge or Test Drive: LeMans 24, and the sheer elegance and gaming grace of games like Metropolis Street Racer and Jet Grind Radio. If one full motion video demo of Metal Gear Solid 2 has convinced you that the PS2 is the better machine, then you haven't opened your eyes to the reality before you. The best next-generation machine from a technical standpoint is the Sega Dreamcast. Let other less informed individuals buy a machine capable of less, on the promise of one game thirteen months from now. In the meantime, you and I will be enjoying the technically best games for months to come
PS2 Vs. DC
I remember when the PS2 was first announced and the technical specifications that were bandied about at that time: 75 million polygons/second, unlimited streaming texture potential, 48GB/s of memory bandwidth, and so on. It wasn't long after this that technology analysts began to question Sony's numbers.
Polygon Performance
The 75 million number was reduced to 66 million. Afterwards, it was admitted that these PS2 numbers were a peak performance figure for flat -shaded, identically shaped polygons. Unfortunately, the image of the PS2 as some sort of polygon monster had already become firmly entrenched in the minds of the mainstream media.
Sega chose a more conservative approach, which is in keeping with their new business philosophy - to regain the trust and confidence of gamers. Since its introduction two years ago, Sega has never mislead gamers about the Dreamcast's power. 3+ million polygons is all that Sega ever claims, even though new games like Test Drive: LeMans push closer to five million in 3D scenes loaded with effects.
The truth is that the PS2 has never displayed more than 2-3 million polys in a game. The main problem is a memory one. With only a 4MB VRAM cache on its GS graphics processor, the PS2 is severely limited in what it can achieve on screen. While it's true that 32MB of main memory and the fairly powerful Emotion Engine processor are capable of producing in the neighborhood of 10-12 million textured and lit polygons/second, the poor design of the GS and its small pipeline to main memory restrict the final number to roughly half of that.
What? You mean, regardless of the power of the EE processor and the large amount of available memory, the PS2 is still only capable of displaying 5-6 million on-screen polygons? The answer, unfortunately, is yes. By contrast, the Dreamcast has only 16 MB of main memory and a processor that is only capable of one-half the number of polygons/second - ie. 5- 6 million - but the whole point of the exercise is to get these onto your television. An intelligent memory saving technique known as differed rendering, coupled with the PowerVR2DC graphics chip's hardware texture compression abilities, allow the Dreamcast to display all of its generated polygons.
To better understand the PS2's limitations and the Dreamcast's strengths, you need only look at the available video memory for your answer. While the DC has 8MB of VRAM, the PS2 has only 4MB of VRAM. The main problem arises because a polygon takes up roughly 40 bytes of RAM. When you have 5 million of them in a given second, this amounts to 5 million/60fps = 83,333 polygons in a give frame of animation. If each of these polygons uses 40 bytes of VRAM, you will use 3.33 MB displaying these 5 million PPS. This doesn't leave the PS2 much room for it's framebuffer which uses around 1.2MB just to display the end data, not to mention that you still need to leave room for textures to put on those polygons.
Now, there are a few tricks which will allow the PS2 to display 5-6 million PPS, even though it only has a 4MB VRAM cache. One of them is to update the cache more frequently than once a second. But, there are other bandwidth limitations that prevent this from happening more than two or three times per second and the net result is that the PS2 is still limited to 5- 6 million PPS.
Here is a table which summarizes the polygon performance of both next- generation machines:
System Processor Stage Graphics Stage Best Example**
PS2 EE + 32MB
12 million PPS* GS + 4MB
6 million PPS* Madden NFL 2001
2 million PPS*
DC SH4 + 16MB
6 million PPS* PVR2DC + 8MB
5 million PPS* Ferrari F355 Challenge
3 million PPS*
* All polygons are textured and lit and represent peak performance
** Only games available right now were considered
Unfortunately, this isn't the PS2's only shortcoming. The reason I emphasize polygon performance at all is because these number have become the defacto standard for judging a console's power, when in fact they tell less than half the story. The main disadvantage of this expensive architecture is it's poor texturing ability.
Texturing Performance
The way texturing works is simple. Polygons and texture data arrive into video memory, textures are applied to the polygons and the result is displayed on screen. Most PC users are used to games with 16MB or more of texture data. A diehard Quake III player might have a setup capable of delivering 32MB of textures during the game. 32MB? But the PS2 and DC only have 4MB and 8MB of VRAM respectively. How can they hope to compete? The answer is that consoles do not hold all of a scene's texture data in memory at once. Usually, the data is streamed over the bus from main memory in a continuous manner.
The Dreamcast is a wonderful texturing beast, due in large part to the efficiency of the PVR2DC's graphics methodology. Two things help the PVR2DC - hardware texture decompression and infinite planes deferred rendering. Unlike the PS2's GS graphics processor, the PVR2DC is capable of decompressing textures on the fly. Thus, DC programmers usually take 20-25MB of texture data and compress it at a 5:1 (sometimes 8:1) ratio to reduce the amount of texture data to only 4 or 5MB. Then, the texture data is sent over the bus to the PVR2DC which simply decompresses the data at the moment of rendering into it's original huge size.
By contrast, the PS2's GS processor has no ability to decompress textures on the fly. This means that all texture data must flow over the relatively small pipeline between main memory and the GS 4MB VRAM cache, at it's original large size. Currently, this fact has limited PS2 games to only around 10 MB of texture data/frame, and this is why the buildings look so similar in Ridge Racer 5. Lack of variety in texturing has made most PS2 games look extremely plain when compared to Dreamcast games like Sonic Adventure, Shenmue, and even Draconus: Cult of the Wyrm.
Moreover, the PVR2DC belongs to the only processor family on the market that uses deferred rendering to texture only those polygons which are facing the gamer in any given frame. Other graphics chips must texture the backs of polygons as well as the front facing polygons. The net effect is to reduce the amount of texturing that the DC has to perform in a given scene by a factor of two or three depending on the complexity of the scene. The greater the scene complexity, the more you see the benefits of deferred rendering. This is why you never see any really large free-roaming 3D games on the PS2. Crazy Taxi, Ecco the Dolphin, and Shenmue are simply not possible on the PS2, because it doesn't have deferred rendering.
Test Drive LeMans on the Dreamcast.
GT3 on the PS2.
Here is another table which summarizes texturing performance for bother machines:
Texture Data Streaming Capacity System Capacity Decompressed Texturing Ability Best Example*
PS2 10MB/frame (Main Memory -> GS Memory) 10MB/frame on screen Dead or Alive 2: Hardcore*
DC 5MB/frame (Main Memory -> VRAM 25MB/frame on screen Shenmue, Ecco the Dolphin*
* Only games available right now were considered
These two performance measure give you a pretty good idea of why the PS2 is, technically-speaking, a poor hardware design. The biggest problem of all with this architecture, however, is the difficulty that development houses are having extracting reasonable performance out of the machine. All the power in the world under the hood, doesn't do anyone much good if the games don't look good.
Development Environment
The PS2 shipped to developers with incomplete kits last year. By contrast, Sega has been giving excellent support to developers both large and small. Most DC developers are using 5th generation development kits, known as Set 5 Dev Kits. Sony mistakenly made the assumption that third-party PS2 developers would want bare bones development kits so they could program the hardware directly like they have during the last days of the PSX. Unfortunately, key features that are very hard to implement, like anti-aliasing to remove jagged edges from on-screen polygons have not yet surfaced.
Developers have responded to these PS2 programming challenges in a number of ways. Some developers like THQ (Summoner) have used a form of CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) blending to fake the effects that true anti- aliasing would offer. This is something which the DC has had for over two years, but unlike the DC CRT method, the PS2 method results in washed out, blurry textures. Tekken Tag Tournament is the perfect US launch title example. While they have eliminated the jagged edges which plague the Japanese version, the end result is that all of the textures in the game seem blurry or washed out. Hardly what I would call revolutionary for a next-generation console.
Another developmental problem, which is the reason for the jaggies in the first place, is serious lack of kit functions that will intelligently enable developers to overcome some of the limitations of the small size of the GS VRAM cache. While all Dreamcast games run at 640x480 resolution, many PS2 games only utilitize a 640x240 field- rendered display which fakes a 640x480 display. Bad jaggies are the result, and these need to be hidden through some form of anti-aliasing (AA, not yet available), or by using the CRT method described above, with all its unintended consequences.
Moreover, the EE processor is actually three separate CPUs in one core. Most developers, for lack of proper tools, are using only one third of the EE's processing ability, because both vector units (VP1 & VP2) are too hard to program. Certainly future games will take advantage of these units, thereby freeing the main CPU to implement some fairly nice AI routines, but the cost of developing these techniques has become enormous - something which I will outline in the next article.
The sad fact is that only a few development houses like EA have been able to extract reasonable next-generation performance out of the PS2 architecture. Even Namco and Konami, the kings of PSX development during the 32 bit era, are having a hard time getting more than 2-3 million PPS out of what is supposed to be the end-all of gaming machines. The fact of the matter is that Namco's 18 month old Soul Calibur on Dreamcast looks worlds better than the newly released Tekken Tag Tournament on PS2. Not very impressive compared to the promises that have been made by Sony and it's cabal of industry sycophants.
Overall
The Dreamcast is the best machine on the market. Tomorrow nothing will have changed. Technically speaking, nothing on the PS2 comes close to the beauty of Shenmue or Ecco, the speed and power of F355 Challenge or Test Drive: LeMans 24, and the sheer elegance and gaming grace of games like Metropolis Street Racer and Jet Grind Radio. If one full motion video demo of Metal Gear Solid 2 has convinced you that the PS2 is the better machine, then you haven't opened your eyes to the reality before you. The best next-generation machine from a technical standpoint is the Sega Dreamcast. Let other less informed individuals buy a machine capable of less, on the promise of one game thirteen months from now. In the meantime, you and I will be enjoying the technically best games for months to come
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Smiley
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I think most of the ps2's success comes from the console having a built in dvd player, at a time when the dvd technology was still rather new. /me thinks that had sega had the foresight to maybe include a dvd player with the console, or even sell an add-on to play them, that the dc could have been around a little longer. I also blame those damn hackers for the early death of the beloved dc.Vchat20 wrote:yep. and everytime i read that it makes me cry thinking that Sega never had a chance against Sony's marketing hype.
as far as the specifications for both consoles: I thought that the gd format discs held substantially less than the dvd format discs that the ps2 used, thus limiting its potential.
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kingbuzzo
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nowadays one would question this write up by bringing up examples like FFX, and the about to be released PSU.
some research would need to be done on the revisions of the Ps2 devkits.
It would take an interview with a 3rd party developer like capcom who's developed and published countless titles on both consoles to really get an idea of what new high budget dc titles using updated devkits would be like compared to the last few processor horses on ps2.
I'll see about what contacts I can dig up, and encourage other scene members to aid in attaining the opinions of highly respected developers.
We can't change history, but I think it's about time people know the true story about the Dreamcast and the Playstation 2, and to kill the lasting effects of the endless hype machine.
thanks,
Kingbuzzo.
some research would need to be done on the revisions of the Ps2 devkits.
It would take an interview with a 3rd party developer like capcom who's developed and published countless titles on both consoles to really get an idea of what new high budget dc titles using updated devkits would be like compared to the last few processor horses on ps2.
I'll see about what contacts I can dig up, and encourage other scene members to aid in attaining the opinions of highly respected developers.
We can't change history, but I think it's about time people know the true story about the Dreamcast and the Playstation 2, and to kill the lasting effects of the endless hype machine.
thanks,
Kingbuzzo.
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Eckostyle
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I never agreed with it. I remember remember shortly getting into fights with The Kron after reading that back in 2003. 
EDIT: This post isint flamebait. Please dont turn it into that.
EDIT: This post isint flamebait. Please dont turn it into that.
$5 says you say it sucks because you cant afford or are too cheap to pay the $15/mo.scuzzo84 wrote:damnit F sony and people who play World of Warcraft
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Hawq
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I miss the time it morphed into a Mr Roboto Vs Safety Dance article
theres no-one else to blameThe Prisoner - Makes NGE's ending look almost intelligible.
Bored? figure out where the above lines from. Answers
RAWFLETechnically speaking, nothing on the PS2 comes close to the beauty of Shenmue or Ecco, the speed and power of F355 Challenge or Test Drive: LeMans 24, and the sheer elegance and gaming grace of games like Metropolis Street Racer and Jet Grind Radio.
Oh have things have changed. As someone said beforehand, it was really the PS2's crappy devkits vs. the DC's awesome devkits that made the difference early on. Early on, most PS2 games looked like ass, like RRV and pretty much every launch game. Now, however, you look at games like GT3,4, MGS2,3, God of War, Tekken 5, Ico, Onimusha 3, R&C:UYA, FFX, and Jak 3, and its pretty easy to see that the PS2 is the more powerful system.
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Orange_Ribbon
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Or his PC can't play it.Eckostyle wrote:I never agreed with it. I remember remember shortly getting into fights with The Kron after reading that back in 2003.
EDIT: This post isint flamebait. Please dont turn it into that.
$5 says you say it sucks because you cant afford or are too cheap to pay the $15/mo.scuzzo84 wrote:damnit F sony and people who play World of Warcraft
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MetaFox
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You crack me up little buddy.evanft wrote:Now, however, you look at games like GT3,4, MGS2,3, God of War, Tekken 5, Ico, Onimusha 3, R&C:UYA, FFX, and Jak 3, and its pretty easy to see that the PS2 is the more powerful system.
You can't compare current games to the older games that the Dreamcast had before it was cancelled. If the Dreamcast had time to stay on the market, we would see more impressive graphics on the Dreamcast as well.
Oh, and F355 Challenge owns GT3 graphics wise by the way.
Oh, I know the comparison was a little off, but the devkits early on were so bad that the kits used later on were probably the equivalent to the awesome kits the DC had. I'm just saying that the DC was pushed closer to its limit faster than the PS2 was. LIke, Shenmue 2 could have been like 75-80% of the system's power, while games that used a similar level of power on the PS2 may have just come out in 2003. But I'm just speculating, so poopie.MetaFox wrote:You crack me up little buddy.evanft wrote:Now, however, you look at games like GT3,4, MGS2,3, God of War, Tekken 5, Ico, Onimusha 3, R&C:UYA, FFX, and Jak 3, and its pretty easy to see that the PS2 is the more powerful system.
You can't compare current games to the older games that the Dreamcast had before it was cancelled. If the Dreamcast had time to stay on the market, we would see more impressive graphics on the Dreamcast as well.
Oh, and F355 Challenge owns GT3 graphics wise by the way.
And f355 is blown away by GT3 graphics-wise. The car models are better, the textures are better, the environments are better, and the lighting effects are better in GT3.
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MetaFox
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People always use Shenmue II as a reference to how much power the Dreamcast is using as it causes the Dreamcast to stutter, but it's not a fair reference point at all. I'll post here what I said to someone who brought up Shenmue II at the Sega boards to illustrate why that is not a fair reference point:evanft wrote:I'm just saying that the DC was pushed closer to its limit faster than the PS2 was. LIke, Shenmue 2 could have been like 75-80% of the system's power, while games that used a similar level of power on the PS2 may have just come out in 2003. But I'm just speculating, so poopie.
Let's see if I can get you to understand what I'm getting at, as you're not looking at the technical aspect of this. Since you like to use Shenmue II as a basis for the Dreamcast's power, let's use this as an example:
Shenmue was a Saturn game, it moved to the Dreamcast when the Saturn was nixed by Sega. The engine of Shenmue recieved a straight port, and didn't utilize any tricks that developers use to get more performance out of the system, as it didn't have to since the Dreamcast was much more powerful than the Saturn. The character models were improved to utilize the stronger hardware of the Dreamcast over the Saturn, but the underlying engine remained the same.
Now, Shenmue II. Yu Suzuki and team wanted to get more out the engine, so they put in more characters, more environments, and more textures. They expanded upon the engine to allow for more details, but it was the same basic engine - the same engine that was written for the Sega Saturn. The reason why there is slowdown and texture clipping is because there are no optimisations in the engine. It's the same engine as before, but the developers tried to push more out of it.
It definately wasn't pushing the Dreamcast to it's limits, as it was the same engine originally designed for the Sega Saturn. There are no programming tricks being made, no steps taken to preserve speed, nothing that would be utilized by later developers for the later games meant for more powerful consoles - the same programming tricks utilized by developers on the Playstation 2 in it's late life.
The Shenmue series, although pretty to look at and fun to play, were the victims of sloppy programming. They should never be used as examples of how far the Dreamcast could have been taken if it was given a chance.
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abydos1000
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I'm sure you realize we could have this debate endlessly and get no where. Had the DC lasted longer, would more advanced dev kits be beating out the PS2 dev kits of today? We will never have the answer to that one. It's true that the early PS2 games were made with rushed dev kits and all of the DC games that also found a home on the PS2 were rushed, sloppy ports. The DC was easier to program for, so even more advanced dev kits might have squeezed even more out. Who knows really?
Of course, had the DC been more successful and made Sega a profit, we would all probably be playing a next-gen Sega system right now.
Of course, had the DC been more successful and made Sega a profit, we would all probably be playing a next-gen Sega system right now.