> Wasn't it supposed to be difficult to develop for, or something? That never helps a
> system's success.
Nope. They went to a lot of effort to make it feel very similar to the then-popular standard of developing for 3dfx GLIDE. By contrast, PS2 used an architecture very similar to Sega's own Model 2 board which required writing DSP assembly to draw a single triangle on the screen. Developers complained bitterly, and a lot went with Criterion's Renderware engine to avoid the issue (most famously GTA 3/Vice City/San Andreas), but even niche PS2 titles sold well given how huge the hardware installed base was.
Specs was kind of a wash. PS2 could do more geometery detail and had a little more CPU grunt, Dreamcast could do more texture detail and SH-series code compiles to about 2/3rds the size of MIPS so you had more RAM available. But PS2 had more RAM, period.
If it was hard to develop for, it wouldn't have been wildly popular in arcades. There's a *lot* of Naomi (and later Atomiswave) titles.
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Re: Where did SEGA go wrong with the Dreamcast!
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