"iPhone as powerful as Dreamcast", says Sega boss

Obsessive gamers’ site Kotaku has posted a video interview with Sega’s American president, Simon Jeffery, in which he declares Apple’s iPhone to be as "powerful as the Dreamcast console". For the uninitiated, the Dreamcast was Sega's fine home games console before tranforming itself into a software-only outfit.

As well, albeit with tongue definitely in cheek, Jeffery acknowledged that for Sega, the iPhone was an alternative to developing a Dreamcast 2. This kind of talk will doubtless prompt endless calls for an iPhone port of Shenmue, and Jeffery did little to dissuade viewers by mentioning that Sega’s vast back catalogue of games puts the company in a good position to become a leading iPhone games developer.

Of course, Sega is in effect already the leading iPhone games developer, with its accelerator-tastic Super Monkey Ball title riding high at the top of the App Store charts. In fact, Super Monkey Ball’s number one position means Sega is currently the leading iPhone developer, full stop.

Asked if there was a big enough user base for Sega to put a lot of emphasis on iPhone gaming development, Jeffery replies: "We’re going to have a pretty substantial iPhone development effort. It’s everything that the [Nokia] N-Gage wasn’t as a gaming platform". Ouch.

Anyway, the full video rattles on for about five minutes but it’s worth a watch. Link below.

[ Kotaku]