Reason Five: The Price is Right

Finally, we took a look at the price of the console. It's $199 at retail, with the games averaging about $40. For the quality of the system, none of us thought that was outrageous.

Mix: $200 is the magical price point for any console, historically this is a really nice entry point for any system. People don't really have a big problem plunking down $200 on a system for a Christmas present, Sega knows that. They got the manufacturing costs down pretty low that they can still make a profit. The "magic number" for consoles is to get a million users, and I think Sega will hit that magic number by March, which is their goal. I think they're going to make it.

Tungsten: That's pretty affordable.

The Dreamcast. It's big. It's mean. It's ready.

Sluggo disagreed with Mix:

Sluggo: $200 is pretty steep, it's at a price point right now where they'll get all the hardcore to rush out to the store and buy it. As soon as they've gotten that wave of people to spend $200 bucks on it, they'll go after that second wave of people waiting for the price to go down. I would expect to see that sometime around the end of November. 'We've got the price down to $159!,' that sort of thing.

Personally I think the $200 price point is right where I expected after playing the system. For the time being it's state of the art. If you get one, expect to pay a couple hundred for the console, plunk down another $45 for a game, and you'll almost definitely want a second controller for your friends (that's what consoles are all about!) So prepare to spend closer to $300 when all is said and done ... With a pretty decent library of titles and more on the way in 2000, and with a whole year to go before we even see the Playstation 2, it seems worth the investment if you love console games. You may see a price drop before the end of the year, but don't count on it.

The Final Word...

Love it or hate it, we're pretty sure that the Dreamcast will be a market force, certainly at the very least until the next Christmas season. If you've ever lost hours of your life to a fighting game with a couple of friends, or if you ever knocked over a bowl of chips because you made some fantastic play on a console football game, or even if you're just addicted to hi-tech -- take a serious look at the Dreamcast. It could make for a great Christmas.

Stay tuned, in part two of this series we'll crack open the Dreamcast and take a better look at that hardware!

- Fargo

Just who are these people? Dave "Fargo" Kosak is the GameSpy Creative Director, he's fun at parties. Matt "Mix" Fox is a Sega junkie and also one of the lead designers on our network. Chris "Shaithis" Bucheler is the main guy behind the GameSpy.com website, but you already knew that. He's also our token sarcastic boy. Sal "Sluggo" Accardo and Todd "Tungsten" Northcutt are both network directors here, they handle all the Planets that orbit GameSpy.com, but they are all just meat for the grinder when it comes to my mad Soul Calibur Skillz.