Cross Generation Console Wars: PSP vs Dreamcast, Part 2
Not long ago I had these two homebrew titans and overall excellent machines face each other in our fictional cross generation console wars, but the results came out inconclusive as both systems came out with the same score. In this chapter, I will revisit on of the areas where both consoles tied and will compare them in other areas I consider to be fair in this case.
DISCLAIMER
I do NOT base the winner of these articles on my personal opinion, I choose categories that I consider to be fair when comparing both systems and make a decision of the winner of a category based on the facts I have at hand, and then count the votes. The end result does not necessarily mirrors my personal opinion and the facts compared in these articles are all true, but that doesn’t mean they are complete, I may have overlooked an important one, which I try to avoid by doing proper research. I accept constructive criticisms, just don’t hate for the sake of hating.
GAMES
I have already shown you the best selling games of each system and they both ended up tying up, but in case you missed it, here they are:
Dreamcast:
– Sonic Adventure
– Soulcalibur
– Crazy Taxi
– Shenmue
– Resident Evil Code: Veronica
– NFL 2K
– NFL 2K1
PSP:
– Gran Turismo
– Monster Hunter Portable 3rd
– God of War: Chains of Olympus
– Monster Hunter Freedom Unite
– Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories
– Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII
– Daxter
This time around, I know I’m gonna be greatly criticized but I will give this vote to the Dreamcast. I know most of you haven’t played most Dreamcast games, if any, and you may consider PSP titles to be either on par or better, but know that without some Dreamcast games, you probably wouldn’t have your favorite franchise today. Yes, Dreamcast games were that innovative, and although newer games do everything bigger and better, the Dreamcast is the giant shoulders most modern games stand on.
Winner: the Dreamcast
PRICE
Cause its all about the benjamins.
Price is almost always a definite factor in any console wars, the highest priced consoles are usually the ones that sell worst: Neo Geo, Atari Jaguar, Sega Saturn, Bandai Pippin, and most recently the PS3. This far wasn’t true for the Dreamcast, which retailed at around $200, pretty common for consoles of that era. You can still pick one up for somewhere between $30 and $60, depending on the games and accessories that come with it.
The PSP had a similar price, retailing for $200, although more expensive than most portable devices, including its competitor, the DS, taking into consideration the big leap that the PSP was at its time, we can consider it a pretty solid deal. Nowadays you can buy a new one for somewhere between $100 and $150, or a used one for somewhere between $40 and $60.
Winner: tied.
Overall both consoles offered a good deal for their price, and although the PSP was a bit more expensive than most portable devices, its power and capabilities made it completely worth it.
INFLUENCE
When talking about influential consoles, the first thing that comes to mind is probably the NES and PS2, maybe in some obscure cases the Atari 2600. But we can’t forget that it was the Dreamcast one of the most important aspects of home consoles today: Online Gaming. While modern consoles do this bigger and better, up until the Dreamcast came Online gaming was either nonexistent, or really, really limited. Other companies such as Sony and Nintendo had to go ahead and implement their own Online features that weren’t originally planned, normally through the use of addons that you would have to buy and connect to the system. When it comes to gaming, Shemnue not only was first in making a 3D real life simulator, it also did it pretty well, with gamers considering a jewel and a must play even today. Other new and interesting games popped up like Seaman, which consisted of petting a fish with a man’s face, yeah sounds odd, but the game ain’t far from good. Sports and futuristic shooters was also big on the Dreamcast, and later kept being big on newer systems.
The PSP was also highly influential as being a big entertaining portable device, mixing games with great multimedia capabilities. While this didn’t go unseen, it didn’t have a big impact on the gaming community with the rise of smartphones, and the PSP being overshadowed by the DS. Not much is to be said about this. The impact on portable devices was big, but it wasn’t big enough for portable gaming devices.
Winner: The Dreamcast.
Next time you connect to PSN or Xbox Live, remember that it’s thanks to the Dreamcast
VOX POPULI
I really didn’t want to make a poll about this one, cause it’s obvious that the PSP will win taking into consideration that this IS a PSP mostly page. Still the Dreamcast got some positive feedback, with some users choosing the PSP only by a small margin. Here are some interesting comments.
Why must you do this Acid? Two of my favourite consoles of all time… :sigh:
My vote: PSP.
Next, do the Commodore 64 vs XBOX (original). 😆
– Casavult
Oh and by the way, I’m not gonna do Commodore 64 vs Xbox. The Xbox already competed against the Wii, and the Commodore could hardly be considered a console.
It’s hard to decide between the Dreamcast and the PSP. Two of my favorite games come from the Dreamcast, and have been ported to multiple systems…
But ultimately, I have to go with the PSP, only due to me having (And still having) memories with it.
(I’ve went through about 2 PSPs. A Daxter Ice Silver one, a reg. black one, and now I’m using my Invisimals Blue edition.)
I’ve been playing the PSP for many a year.
heck, I’ve had PSP before I had a computer, and Xbox 360.
– XxGodOfWar2xX
I would have picked dreamcast except installing the SD adapter is a pain and not all models of dreamcast allow for backup play from 700MB CDs.
– b2p1mp
I generally disagree with him, just because not all models can be hacked doesn’t mean it stops being a good system.
Our super maiderator gave me two ideas for upcoming articles:
VMU vs PocketStation
It must happen
Game Gear vs Virtual Boy
– jc_gargma
I like the GameGear vs Virtual Boy one, but I’m not too sure about the VMU vs Pocketstation one, they are from different generations, and they basically held the same purpose, but can we even consider them consoles? I’m not too sure about that.
Winner: the PSP
With 17 out of 17 votes, the PSP clearly stands as the favorite console of this page.
CONCLUSION
Counting all the votes for all the systems, the Dreamcast comes as the winner by one vote, which defies my previous expectations that the PSP would win by a large margin. There is no doubt in my mind that both consoles are equally awesome, and it’s clear that whoever the winner might have been, it would will be by a small margin.
This said, don’t get offended if the PSP lost, consider both consoles to be tied.
As these are two of the most homebrew-enabled consoles, here are links for great and huge homebrew collections for the PSP and the Dreamcast:
If you enjoyed this article, give the older ones a try:
1st
Good job, man. Mission accomplished! We can all go home now.
Oh man, so many great memories with the psp. I had put the transparent shell on mine, and 6 color changing LEDS all around it that would cycle through a few colors. Dual micro sd card adapter. And a knob behind the battery to adjust the brightness customly 😀
http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d89/highwindcloudstrife/IMG_2515.jpg
i been true a lots of psp … first time i moded my psp had to change the screen change it like twice.. alright psp tough..
soulcalibur fo dreamcast was alright …
Soulcalibur and Sonic where the bomb!!
‘The Commodore 64 could hardly be considered a console’
PPFFFFFFFHHHTTTTTT (sound of me spitting all over my screen)
ARE YOU NUTS? The Commodore 64 was insanely influential in the creation of the popular home consoles genre. It was the all in one platform from which you could not only play games, but you could do word processing, printing and complex painting and drawing. You could also not only plau games from a cartridge, but from a floppy disk and a cassette tape as well! It pioneered the way for consoles that could accept more than one form of media storage, including things like Dreamcast’s CD playback support, the PS2’s DVD functions and the Xbox’s too. It had a SHITLOAD of games. It may not have been popular in the US, but boy was it great in Australia and Europe. Great games like Donkey Kong Jr and Galaga had their first majorly successful ports on the system, in all 3 media forms. My dad owned one back in the 80’s and he claims that that machine was probably the most influential piece of technology that got him into the conputer industry. Wre even bought one not too long ago (I payed half, he payed the other) and to this day we still sit down togethet and play Zork and Pheonix periodically every week. The entire line of Commodore computers, all the way from the PET and the Vic-20 to the C64 and 128, were very powerful and highly reliable as the all in one personal computers, actually being mostly used as gaming consoles. heck, they even released a version of the Commodore 64 that was just a console that used cartridges! Of course it would be considered as a console, maybe just not by your definition.
Sounds like a PC to me, not a dedicated console.
agreed.
Consoles allow a software maker to target a specific platform while modern PCs are a moving target where games run differently on different systems and everyone has a slightly different graphics card or hard drive size. Home computers of the time were more like consoles in this way than like modern PCs; the occasional upgraded version (like the C128) never attracted much developer attention and for all practical purposes they were a single platform targeted by software makers,. They were also much more games-focused than modern PCs anyway.
pehaps a comparison between the cpc+ and 64+ as they where the console equivalents for the commodore and amstrad stables?the c64 was marketed as a homecomputer….
Wasn’t the original ps3 marketed as a pc, especially in the EU where they got some sort of financial/ tax incentive for doing so because of its Linux support through other OS? Just because it does something other than play games makes it not a console?
I dunno – I think you left out accessories – Bass Fishing with the rod and House of the Dead with Light Gun were awesome and what is the most useful accessory a PSP has? My toss up is the memory card or the case you can put it in – How Exciting!
Read the first part of this episode.
i stand humbly corrected…. Good job!
what i wanted was a pc tool like kakaroto xmb+
but one that reads dlna servers cheers
The Dreamcast was the best at porting the Arcades to a home console. When you played the games you still had the same feeling as if it was an Arcade (minus the physical differences). Ya, ya, ya ya, ya!
Psp and Dreamcast are responsible for the loss of my entire life. Haha, not really but I remember coming home from school to play Dreamcast. I would skip my homework, and never study. Then it got worse, as I started to bring a console to school to play during school (Psp). My grades suffered from these consoles, who knows I could have been a Doctor lol.
Sounds like me 😀 till i realized that i needed money to buy more games and i lived happily ever after…to be continued PS4SLIM!
Bro the Sega genesis with the Modem was the first console to go online using p2p not the dreamcast it’s all Sega but just saying
I waited for part 2 and still didn’t see anything covering the vmu on the dreamcast. Oh well, one of the best addonsb for a controller that will be dearly forgotten.
I retract my statement