If you are debating on whether or not to purchase one of these machines, or to wait and get the up and coming PS2 from Sony, then is is the article for you.
Lets start with the facts. The Dreamcast IS currently the most powerful console on the European and American market. It is a 128bit compared to a playstation which is only 32bit and a Nintendo 64 which is amazingly 64bit! All this means is that it will run much faster and can do more things at the same time with out slowing down as much as the other machines. But this actually means nothing if you cannot find any games for the machine that you are going to enjoy, lets face it, if the actual game is rubbish, you won't care how fast or well a game runs, right?

So, currently the dreamcast has got a reasonable range of games for it, however I personally feel that at the moment most(and I only mean 60-70%) of them are shortlived and a very quick thrill, hardly worth the £40 pounds or so that you are going to have to pay. Sports wise the range tends to concentrate on the american sports of American football and basketball, and the farce that is wrestling(which is great if you follow these sports). Don't get me wrong, there are football games out there but they all pale in comparison to some of the other titles available on other consoles, being neither graphically superior to previous efforts nor very enjoyable in terms of gameplay. Driving games are beginning to get much better with the liokes of V-Rally 2 having come out recently.
Sega as you may or may not know are very successful in the Arcade business. This leads them to convert all their arcade game to the Dreamcast which many will say is a good thing, and yes many of the games are very enjoyable. However I can't help feeling that to pay £40 pounds on a game that is enjoyable for half an hour to an hour tops is a bit pointless.Sega have forgotten that all their arcade conversions are just that, a game designed to keep you occupied for a minimal amount of time in an arcade. And even though Sega do have faithful conversion from arcade to home they only add minimal extras to try and justify the £40 price tag.
On the whole there is only a handful of games that I would seriously recommend you buy(Resident Evil:Code Veronica, Tony Hawks Pro Skateboarding,Soul Calibur, Sega Bass Fishing,Soul Reaver among them). But this is improving as we speak (Don't forget that the Dreamcast is still a reasonably new console and hence it's still in it's teething stage. Sega's main problem is that while there are many great and promising games due out (Shemue,GTA2, Phantasy Star online, Metropolis Street racer), their support of the European market is quite atrocious and at best, very unorganised. Games due out on the launch of the machine are still slipping further and further back. And they have only just got there online gaming network up and running. But if you think you'll be playing Soul Calibur with your friend in the states any time soon, think again.The system is too slow at the moment to deal with such demands which isn't Sega's fault, but they shouldn't make promises they can't keep. Internet access is available, but again, it's slow, unreliable, It has a tendency to throw you out every 20 minutes and it not very easy to use.