Brazilians, eh?

Unfortunately, Teletext wouldn't let me spend 10 pages complaining about our rotten luck, so here's another column about boring old video games instead.

Couldn't hear them sing, though. 

PAGE 2

Now, there are lots of things I don't understand about the new Sega console. (Although the name isn't one of them - "Dreamcast" might be a bit flowery, but it's a lot better than the awkward, ugly, meaningless "Katana" or "Dural".)

One of them is why on Earth anyone might think that what a games console really needs is to have a version of flipping Windows making it crash every 20 minutes.

But the biggest one is why there's going to be a new Sega console at all.

PAGE 3

Let's think about this for a minute. Everyone knows that games companies make all their money from software sales, not hardware. (It's already been widely reported that Dreamcast hardware will be sold at a loss.)

And, of course, Sega's hardware record has been diabolical for most of the last decade. The Game Gear, the Mega CD, the Nomad, the 32X, the aborted Neptune and now the Saturn - that's six flops in a row. The Mega Drive, in fact, is the only bit of hardware Sega ever got right.

PAGE 4

Sega's hardware flops have all but crippled the company - they've lost hundreds of millions of pounds and made thousands of staff redundant in the last few years, and gifted Sony a near-total stranglehold on the market.

So why is the company still trying to plug away pointlessly at something it obviously just can't do?

Sega's strength is writing games. Games are where all the money is. There's a pretty obvious course of action developing here, surely?

PAGE 5

It's a little scary that no-one at Sega seems capable of putting two and two together and realising that the way to save the company is to abandon all conceit of being able to compete in the hardware market, and put everything into doing what they do best - games.

There's no reason, other than pig-headed corporate pride, why Sega couldn't develop games for what are currently competing formats - it's the perfect solution for everybody.

Except firemen, obviously.

PAGE 6

At a stroke, there would effectively be a single gaming platform, which would have many benefits, not least the fact that there would never, ever be another "My console is better than your console" letter printed anywhere.

A single platform is the biggest single step towards a mass market, which brings prices down, which in turn allows for more innovation and imagination in game design. (Because people are a lot more prepared to buy something unusual and new if they don't have to risk 50 quid on it.)

PAGE 7

It'd be good news for Sega, too - they'd be free from the hugely expensive burden of developing new hardware for little or no reward.

Sure, they'd lose out by taking a smaller cut from every game sold if it was published on another format, but that'd be outweighed by the sheer volume of possible sales - imagine how many copies of Sega Rally 2 or Virtua Fighter 3 would be sold if they came out on Playstation (or, come to that, Playstation 2) tomorrow. It's all profit, no risk. Why can't they see?

PAGE 8

Of course, everybody wants the kudos of being the manufacturer of the No.1 machine, but let's face it, that competition is over. Sony won. (It's heavily rumoured within the industry that Nintendo have already effectively given up on the N64, hence the anorexic release schedule.)