With my usual browsing of the web for information on Dreamcast related info, I came across 2 very interesting links regarding to the history of the Dreamcast and its design.
Hideki Sato in an interview upon reflection had waned the Dreamcast to be a more cube-shaped design; something similar to the Nintendo Gamecube. He made multiple prototypes which utilised a front loading disc drive which puts the design closer to the Panasonic DVD GameCube than Nintendo's own system.
What's interesting in a completely separate interview, Yuji Naka revealed an interesting bit of history of the Dreamcast:
It was at that instant that the name "Gamecube" was revealed, but the moment I heard it I thought "Huh? I think I've heard that somewhere before". It was true - three years ago when we were deciding the name of the Dreamcast, the name Sonic Team offered as a candidate was "G-Cube". The "G" stood for "game", of course, so I was a little surprised. At the time, the DC's external shape wasn't finalized yet; there were flat and box-shaped designs. I remember that Sonic Team liked the box shape more so they offered G-Cube as their choice. Oh, and there were four places to stick controllers in, too, so the unit looked a lot like the Gamecube. That DC used a front-loading mechanism for inserting disks, but I definitely felt some affinity between the two."
So there you go. Whether it was just bizarre coincidence or Sega had some insight into Nintendo's design plans, the Dreamcast could have ended up looking a lot more like a GameCube and could have completely changed Nintendo's plans for their N64 successor. Unfortunately, none of the popular prototypes that were shown off at trade shows or magazines resemble such a design. We know about the Italian prototype design mentioned in Archipel's Dreamcast documentary series 'A Dream Cast' - was this illusive cube design?
https://web.archive.org/web/20001017104454/http://www.fgnonline.com/news/15351.html
http://shmuplations.com/segahistory/
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