PC-like build

Today's modern consoles are essentially like custom-built PC configurations with graphics cards from ATI or Nvidia and locked in specifications for RAM and processing power. This, of course, is especially true of Microsoft's Xbox and Xbox 360, which is why many PC developers felt so comfortable in making the transition to Xbox. It was the Dreamcast arguably that began this trend, however. 

Sega's console was in fact built on top of the Windows CE operating system and its PowerVR2 chipset made it the first console to really have a graphics accelerator. Consoles today are even more complicated with multi-core architectures (Xbox 360) and dedicated SPUs (PS3), but looking back it seems like Dreamcast was once again ahead of its time.