While there are many fond memories of gaming that I often reflect back on, the Dreamcast has a special place in my mind and heart. Besides it being Sega's last hurrah as a platform holder, the console was truly ahead of its time with connected gaming perhaps the most widespread use of PowerVR's time rendering scheme.
Sadly, rampant piracy, brilliant competitive efforts from Sony, and market forces snuffed out Dreamcast before its time was truly up. But one little known fact was that Sega was pushing for Xbox to be fully compatible with Dreamcast software.
There wasn't any secret that Microsoft was looking to buy Sega, but what we're finding out just now is that then Sega Chairman Isao Okawa offered the Dreamcast assets for Microsoft it include in the Xbox, hoping that to give the Sega platform a chance to live on, if not a second wind.
"Before Mr. Okawa passed away," tweets former Microsoft exec Sam Furukawa, "he visited Gates several times, to see if it would be possible to add Dreamcast compatibility into the Xbox."
As sweet as that would have been, negotiations fell apart when Microsoft refused to include internet connectivity function in with Dreamcast games.
All this, if indeed true, will remain just a piece of video game lore, but it's still interesting nonetheless to think of what might have happened if Microsoft made the Xbox backwards compatible with the Dreamcast.
Read more at Kotaku.
