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    Shortly, after the intense competition brought by the Playstation, Sega decided to drop its line-up for the Sega Saturn and killed further support for the system. Now Nintendo has been looking at Playstation's progress by the corners of their eyes and began their plans to launch their 64-Bit system.

    Rumors at the time claimed it was called the "Ultra 64." Wildfire swept through the gamers with the lust to play Nintendo's arcade to homeport of Killer Instinct 2 and Cruisin' USA. Seeing that there was a huge demand for the system, it was shortly released as the Nintendo 64.

    The Nintendo 64 managed to pull an immense audience, not surprising considering how they formed an army of loyal fans with the NES and the SNES. Attention was inevitable, though gamers did have their standards set after the Playstation was released. Opting for cartridge-base while their competitors went for the more flexible storage CD media was a disappointment to the general gaming community and is Nintendo's downfall with the Nintendo 64. Nevertheless, the N64 still made an impact with the quality of games released for the system.

    After Sega had discontinued further support for the Saturn, they immediately went to work on their newly improved system, in hopes to retake the pedestal they once had with the Genesis. You may know that system now as the Dreamcast. This system is basically a GD-ROM system with a supped up multimedia interface with the PowerVR2 chipset. Despite hardware and software problems Sega had with the initial release of the Dreamcast here in the U.S., that was no obstacle for the gamers. Much like the Nintendo 64's introduction, people lusted this piece of hardware with a passion (or maybe I'm exaggerating). Nevertheless, Sega has once again proved themselves to their competitors with "an astonishing 500,000 Dreamcast units have been sold in only two weeks since its release in the US according to this PR on Yahoo. This is some 100, 000 more than Sega had predicted." (http://www.ars-technica.com). I think Sega's earned that spot on the pedestal once again.

    Sega took gamers to the next level and in doing so, Sony fears for its success in the states and waited just for the right time to counteract Sega's release. Just shortly after the release of Dreamcast, Sony unveils the specs and features on the upcoming Playstation 2 to keep the gamers coveting this powerful system, which branches off to support other media such as DVD movies. Though Sony's counteraction seem to be ineffective as Sega's Dreamcast continue to gradually make the sales and build their reputation among the gamers.

    Would you like to know who else wants a piece of this action? Try Microsoft. Yeap they want to introduce themselves to the console scene and immediately shift to the top. They have plans to release a system called the "X-Box", but code-named "X-Bus." Vague rumors say that it might sport a 4 Gigabyte hard drive, but much of the system's specs are unknown. Considering that Microsoft has the resources to pull something beautiful out of its ass, they're a force to be reckoned with.

    Sony is taking their time to complete the Playstation 2 to be launched in March of 2000 in Japan and September-ish in the U.S. Here's a vague list of what the Playstation 2 will come in. The medium for the system is going to be DVD and CD, it's capable of putting out 1 million triangles/sec, and the DVD/CD-ROM is 12X speed. Playstation 2 will be able to play DVD movies and have total support for double-sided DVDs. And it's also capable of backward compatibility meaning that it will support PSX games on the system. They also have a new Dual Shock 2 controller will have pressure sensitive buttons (except start and select) able to sense up to 256 degrees of pressure. This enables game developers to be more articulate with reactions in the game by variations of pressure applied on the buttons. All these features prove Sony to be worthy foe against Sega and Nintendo but have yet to see if Sony will be victor in the long run.

    Meanwhile, Nintendo has been meticulously working on their new project code-named "Dolphin." They've recently signed a deal with S3 to use their Texture Compression technology for Dolphin's ArtX graphics chip. The texture compression is done completely in hardware, thus enabling the Dolphin to produce crisp razor clear graphics in high resolutions with no slow down. Nintendo is also embedding MoSys 1T-SRAM into the ArtX graphics chip to provide fast access for graphics processing. Basically all this techno junk says that it's going to be one hella impressive system. It doesn't stop there. Nintendo has announced that the Japanese release of Dolphin will feature in 2 versions. One version is specifically streamlined for gaming-only, and the other with DVD and CD capabilities at a higher price, obviously. Though they're still looking into possibilities of bringing the DVD playback feature elsewhere. Reason being, if everyone is rushing out to their nearest EB to get Playstation 2, it's obviously superfluous to release DVD playback feature for their Dolphin. The system is using the latest computer chips available and is so fast that it's capable of splitting the screen into four quadrants and play a separate session in each quadrant. All in all, everything seems to be going well for Nintendo's next-gen machine. Except, due to late software, the Dolphin will not make it for a year 2000 release, and it'll be too late to go head to head with the Playstation 2 if that's what they're trying to aim for.

    Aside from the consoles, hardware requires software to back it up. Playstation 2 and Dreamcast possess the ability to connect to the internet, spawning a whole new breed of gaming never seen in a home console before. Playstation 2 will have Final Fantasy Online from Squaresoft to go head to head with Phantasy Star Online for the Dreamcast. Obviously, those two titles will be the first console RPG titles that will operate online much like Everquest for the PC from Sony. These titles will be the strengths of the systems that will determine the rise of either platform.

    In conclusion, the future of console gaming is a predictable road where consoles are constantly trying to keep their specs equivalent to the fastest computers available today. As the consoles become more powerful, developers will be able to take advantage of the power and produce better quality games. The competition in console gaming has always been a fierce struggle within the arena of the entertainment industry, therefore one swift mistake can jeopardize the future of a system as demonstrated by Nintendo's N64 and Sega's Saturn systems. However, a console's establishment is solely based on the type of software and support that is going for the system. A game that is in high demand such as Final Fantasy VIII can feasibly create a higher demand for a console such as Sony's Playstation. Therefore, a console's future can well be in the software developer's hands-to create attractive high quality games. It is the creative minds of these artists that cause such an impact in video gaming as a whole.

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