Did someone say Khrushchev?

During the Xbox 360 launch someone told me that Microsoft had engaged focus groups in Japan wherein they were asked who they thought had designed a logo free 360. When the answer came back predominantly in favour of Apple they grinned with the fresh smile of success that proceeded their natural incompetence. Is that true? Hell I don’t know, but it’s a good story.

Who doesn’t love Apple products enough that they would want to be compared to them after all? Me for one. You can often find me drooling over them and wanting to get my hands on all their shiny creations. But the long standing closed architecture nature of the company has always kept their toys out of my house. I’d own an ipod if I didn’t have to use itunes and could replace the battery myself. But for all the hip ads Apple is another secretive corporation. You have to be if you want to succeed I think. Having people hack and slash your products isn’t very profitable from what I’ve seen of it.

When Sega launched the Dreamcast there’s no way they foresaw what it would become. Yea, I’m the zillionth person saying that the Dreamcast isn’t dead. It’s half dead. It’s free and clear of the original idea as nearly every game that graced it has continued on other platforms. I in fact largely ignored it when it launched. I had my Playstation between exams and wasn’t that interested in 3D Sonic games even though I’d grown up on the genesis and owned a hedgehog (no I didn’t name it Sonic her name was money-penny). But what I missed at full price then I got for $25 a few years later. And what I got that day was far more than I had expected.

As far as seizing the means of production, the Dreamcast is an icon of 21st century socialism. For starters I doubt there will ever be another system than accidentally affords a gamer the chance to play so many games with little more than a copy of discjuggler and a spindle of blank cds. Not that I endorse that sort of thing mind you, but in doing so one would be beyond simply seizing the way a product is made. What is being seized is what truly builds a society. It is the evolved act of socialist ideals, seizing the means of cultural production, if games are finally considered not just a cultural phenomenon, but indeed the evolution of media where all forms of art and expression finally merge in a medium offering complete immersive interaction. In many ways culture should be free. Culture is the result of people, and people are entitled to it. All the price tags in between keep too many from participating in the inherent rights of a societal conversation and thereby the experiment they live within. Hey I know people gots to get paid, I certainly like to. But if the bourgeois classes that can afford the newest consoles determine industry prices and leave the rest of the masses waiting years for price drops, then the Dreamcast is the first machine to accidentally equalize all members of a gaming society out of the box. The first part of its longevity shifted the emphasis from how much money you could spend toward how knowledgeable a gamer could become in order to exploit the opening. And certainly any system can be modified to afford the same advantages, but again the out of the box nature of the Dreamcast to do so places it in an entirely different class.

Aside from nostalgia, no other system has created the kind of community that the Dreamcast has. From a continued flow of imports long after North American market death to home-brews and cd magazines, the Dreamcast has grown beyond the console label and become a cultural icon. And it all seems so accidental that I’m willing to believe the machine had a destiny from the day it was conceived. The only regret is the knowledge that aspects of its underground longevity also doomed its commercial success as far as Sega is concerned. And though I am equally upset that it ended Sega’s hardware development it also became something greater than the company that created it. The Dreamcast became a machine that belonged to the people. A device that they could claim and make uniquely their own. And at the same time that defiant act of individuality also created new communities of shared interest and connection around that symbol of cultural freedom and gave rise to a revolution that continues into another generation of gaming.