Hello all,

Well, its been two weeks since the last update and I've a lot of news to cover. First off, for those in Australia and New Zealand I've some important news if you've not read it on the site already: Ozisoft will be delaying the release of the Dreamcast until October. The main reasons cited were due to the extra time needed to regionalize the DC networking software. While no specific date has been set, Ozisoft rep Steve O'Leary mentioned that Sega Europe has planned to only release five games with the DC at launch, and after that one new title a week. He continued saying the AU/NZ launch would have ten titles...thus this sets the date in late October. Please note that there has been no official word from Sega Europe regarding their release strategy, but they will be making an announcement tomorrow (Wednesday).

Another strange thing that I can't dismiss in the report is that O'Leary was quoted as saying there were 2 million DC's preordered in the US. A pretty large figure, which probably is the result of a misquote. Note that only in the past few days have retailers in the US confirmed that 200,000 DCs have been preordered thus far. The current going rate is about 14,000 consoles a week. Sega has six more weeks until DC launch, and already their 200k sales have doubled Sony's previous preorder record for the PSX. A new note regarding the US console, SoA will be shipping the console with a newer, more durable version of the DC control pad. Essentially, there were some problems with the L and R shift buttons wearing out too quickly. The new version will also ship in Japan later this year.

Ok, enough about the future for now. Lets talk about this week. Namco in particular. So, in their 'minimal' Dreamcast support they have announced that they will be producing two new titles after this week's release of Soul Calibur. One being a fighting game, the other...who knows. Now, this week we get to see the title whose date was originally set to 'replace' the delayed Shenmue. So, as a replacement how good is it? Extremely good. In fact, Famitsu has given the game the coveted rating of 40/40. A rating which only one game has previously received ever: Zelda 64. Thus far the game has over 100,000 preorders. Some site the review, and the presales as the cause in a 16% spike in Sega Enterprises stock value.

Two other Dreamcast titles come out this week, Kita He ~Photo Memories~ and Sega's Let's Make a Pro Baseball Team. For the Saturn, we finally see the release of Street Fighter Zero 3. The release of the game leaves only one Saturn title left: Sonic 3D: Flicky Island. Its a nice gesture on Sega's part, too bad the game is a mere Japanese release of a mediocre title. Well, that's all for this week, see ya!

-Greg