Jump to:
Screenshots || Theory vs Fact || Games
Comparison game screenshots and movies:

Theory vs. Fact

Most casual gamer players who know about the Dreamcast know about it in name only, and seem to have completely failed to categorize it in any way. Several facts must be acknowledged before continuing to read the information on this comparison. The first and most important is that the Dreamcast was the first game console of the "128-bit" generation, or the "current generation" by 2006 standards. Secondarily but almost as important is the fact that the Playstation 2 was and is reputed to be the stand-alone greatest console of this generation. Finally, the perception of the PS2's absolute superiority leans heavily on hype, sales numbers and marketing, but it is important to note that crucial facts which Sony's hype depends on is demonstrably false. Knowing the Dreamcast and PS2's graphical and software advantages is an important thing, since the hype, game magazines, and Sony fans exclusively favor the PS2.

Highlights of the graphical comparison are quoted directly below from a Usenet discussion:

"The PS2 handles everything needed to render 3D graphics, and that's about it. The EE sends polygon data (three or four 2D coordinates, and pointers to texture, bump, light and dark data), and the GS pumps the data to the screen. It offers little in effects, and places the burden of rendering on the CPU. (...) Since the bottle-neck is with the processor, I'll take a moment here to discuss this further. The EE can render 36 million polygons with some effects on (though it still doesn't do many things the PowerVR can). This is full bore, which means the CPU is doing nothing but dumping polygons. With game physics and AI bundled into the mix, expect polygon counts to drop. More complex games will hurt more in the graphics department. Of course, the polygon count, even in the potential worst case (all bezier surfaces, 50% CPU spent on AI and physics) is still faster than the PowerVR. In fact, about twice as fast. What does this mean. Well, look at the current DC game models. For every straight edge you can see, subdivide it once (so that each edge is broken into two), and that's the detail improvement you'll see. Pretty substantial? Of course, as game developers make better use of the CPU(s), I'd expect polygon performance to increase.

On the DC or PowerVR's side, the 3.5 million polygon count allows for scenes of up to 58,000 polygons (about 4x's the detail in Quake 3). At 640x480 the pixel fill rate can redraw the entire screen at 650 fps. Unlike the EE/GS, the PowerVR only draws a pixel once per frame. This is called overdraw, and in Quake 2, costs performance of about 1/3 (that is, each pixel is typically redrawn about three times). The PowerVR also handles subsampling and has the video ram to do so. Games could be rendered internally at 1280x960, and down sampled to 640x480 for television output. (...) As noted earlier in this text, the fpu that is on the PowerVR eliminates several steps from the CPU's burden. And most importantly, while currently no game is known to fully support this, the DC can use modifier volumes. Effects such as light beams, shadows, lasers, and glowing suns are all possible with this, which would otherwise require significant CPU effort, and visual tricks to accomplish (such as using a flat polygon for fake shadows). Also, the polygon per second count is for drawn polygon's only. Polygon's that are buried under other ones are not drawn at all, nor are polygons that are to far left/right/up/down to be seen on screen, nor are polygons which are facing the other way (about half). (35)"

It should be needless to say that no game ever used the advanced features of the PowerVR chip to the extent listed here. The point of quoting this is to show as clearly as possible that the Dreamcast's resources were not maxed out in its short 2 year lifespan, and that had it continued to be developed for many more sophisticated games could have been created for the platform. It might seem silly to some to make this point, but the theory that the Dreamcast was running at full throttle when it was discontinued is so prolific it is likely that many will scoff even at the detailed comparison just quoted.

The PS2, on the other hand enjoyed a full lifecycle as the lowest common denominator for the 128-bit generation of consoles. As late as 2005, Capcom was forced to drop the polygon counts of the PS2 port of Resident Evil 4 from the Gamecube to between 900k to 1.5 million polygons per second, at 30 frames per second, while the Gamecube original ran at nearly twice this polygon count. This means that the entire generation of game consoles was relatively close to the Dreamcast's specs. This is in opposition to the idea, propagated by the media, that the PS2, Xbox and Gamecube's games were running 2-4 times the polygon counts of the Dreamcast's max specs. So, it was actually only blind brand name following coupled with the masses buying into hype which caused the mass market to reject three consoles in favor of the PS2 exclusively. This is evidenced by the massive public choice for the PS2 being made clearly, before the Xbox and Gamecube even launched.

It is not the point of this website to make any console invalid in any way, whether it be a popular console or an unpopular console. The facts, and when comparing consoles directly against one another, merely demonstrate that absolutely no console had an absolute edge in any category, especially while it was competing against another console. The only way any console has ever gotten a massive lead in overall library was as the direct result of several years of market dominance. This is especially true in the case of the Dreamcast, PS2, Xbox and Gamecube, where the choice for the PS2 by the public occurred prior to the PS2 demonstrating any of its hardware capabilities, and before it had even half of the Dreamcast's game library in the United States. The PS2's dominance was the result of a massive public opinion of its superiority, based on hype rather than reality.

The belief in the PS2's technical and library superiority was powerful enough to cause the public to overlook three consoles of the same generation. It is the point of this web page to demonstrate this as true in every generation of console, in the hopes that future generations are marked by competition, rather exclusive mass hype machines. It is the mass tendency to exclusively favor one console of each generation that is killing innovation in the Industry, which is subsequently killing the companies responsible for the majority of the Industry's innovation.

The following is a month to month list of notable Dreamcast software compared to notable PS1 and PS2 software.

Click to Jump to:
Info on Notable Game Lists
Specs and History
PS2 Tomfoolery

Click here for information on the notable game lists.

E-mail me with suggestions or comments.