So is the PS3 the modern dreamcast?

[disolitude]

MrStickball hit the nail on the head when he compared the PS3 to the Saturn.

Sega was the king of 3rd party games with the Genesis and pretty much lost exclusivity for them all with the saturn due to programming dificulties for the machine, lower sales than the competitors and bonehead management. Very similar situation to the ps2 to PS3 hand off...

Price...Saturn was more expensive and was losing money for Sega due to sony's push to sell PS1 at a loss. Eventually when PS1 went to 199 in nov 1996, sega couldn't afford to lower it to that so it kept it at 249 and bundled games with the system (VC, VF2, Sega Rally). Again, similar to ps3 being unable to lower the cost.

Games wise, Saturn was only given excellent games by Segas own developers (who alone could take on any other company in quaility appart from nintendo). It was given PS1 ports that a lot of the time turned out to be inferior. PS3 is in the same boat.

Now Sony has much deeper pockets than Sega did back then so I don't see we will see Sony following in Segas footsteps...but Saturn and PS3 are the most similar if comparing a PS3 to an old console.