I hate to rain on the 360 parade even though I can’t wait for mine, but this article provides some very interesting questions. There certainly are a hell of a lot of parallels between the upcoming Xbox 360 and the Dreamcast and although I couldn’t put my finger on it before, I’ve been feeling recently that there seems to be a curious lack of the excited chatter that surrounds most launches like I haven’t seen since the Dreamcast. Maybe I just haven’t been paying attention, which is a theory which seems to be supported by the number of preorders this thing was attracting (140 in two shops alone) irrespective of supply issues, but the article is nonetheless worth a look.

One thing that has to be asked, however, is whether or not Dreamcast 2 is necessarily a bad thing. Commercially maybe, but creatively I still maintain that the DC is the second best console of all time behind the Super NES. Even if the PS3 manages to overshadow the 360 in the way that the PS2 did the DC, as the article says the new Xbox will have Halo 3 which, judging from the state of the story at the end of Halo 2, will be worth the price of admission alone. Besides the fact that Microsoft has near-unlimited funds to pour into this thing, and when the chips are down even a colossus like Sony struggle to stack up against MS.

Time will have to tell on this one. For now I’m just going to look forward to my 360 and I’ll look forward to the PS3 when that turns up as well.