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Why did the Dreamcast fail?
- Thread starter Drilbit777
- Start date
Sega Japan, I remember reading sega America was also developing a successor to Saturn and was to be powered by voodoo gfx card, was more powerful than the power vr card. Sega Japan overruled it and went with power vr, that's when EA said we are not supporting it.
Any else remember something like that?
Any else remember something like that?
A Black Falcon
Member
Correct. Sega probably shouldn't have released it at all, but they were too proud to give up without one last try... and we're fortunate they did, because the DC is amazing, but a sane company wouldn't have released the thing in the first place, not with their financial situation. Sega needed something like the Wii to happen to them, but with the PS2 hyped to unprecedented levels that was never going to happen.
Otherwise, I would only add that while DC sales in the US were pretty good for the first few months, sales flattened out after that. That is, the DC did well from September to December of '99 in North America, but after that, not as much. DC sales flattened off, and at the end of the year the PS2 released and wiped out everything else in short order (N64, DC, etc., sales went down fast!). Meanwhile, in Japan, the Dreamcast sold badly, and completely failed to sell anywhere near the Saturn's level of temporary success (the Saturn was successful in Japan from '95 to '97, but after that the PS1 took over...). And in Europe sales were okay, but as usual not too high; only Sony and the Wii and DS have sold in Europe as well as in the US and Japan.
Overall, supposedly the Dreamcast shipped 9.13 or so (if I remember right?) million systems, a bit below the Saturn's 9.25 million, or something. Those numbers probably aren't quite right. I'm not sure if we actually know accurate Dreamcast sales, Sega never has been good at letting that information out there (for any of their consoles), unlike Nintendo.
Those sales aren't awful, but 2001 was actually a better year for the DC than 2000, because people bought it as Sega started dropping hardware prices through the floor just in order to get rid of all the systems they'd made. The problem is that Sega did not have the money to survive through the first few years of the generation and get to that point where maybe they could make money on software; you need to lose money at first in order to make it later, in this industry, but Sega had neither the cash reserves or instant-hit system that they'd have needed to survive. Sega always was a smaller company than its major competitors, with less money and more irresponsible spending. Nintendo's strong focus on running profits and never going into debt is a major part of why they're still around today as a hardware manufacturer.
... 1 in 3? What? No, the Sega CD sold ~2.5 million at most! I haven't seen definite sales, but from what I have seen, 2.1-2.5 seems about all that it could have sold (though I guess 2.7, as one person said earlier in this thread, is also possible). Meanwhile 30-40 million Genesis systems sold worldwide; my guess is ~35 million including all models, but there's no way to be certain how much it actually sold overall.
The Sega CD was indeed the most successful addon of its generation, though (the second place Turbo CD had ~1.92 million sales), so 2.5 million or so sales isn't a failure; the system did okay. I do agree that the 32X is the bigger problem.
funkystudent
Member
It went up against MGS2, Final Fantasy X, GTAIII, Fifa, Madden and Gran Turismo 3.
Dead Man Typing
Member
PS2 hype worldwide.
No Fifa in Europe (or a good Sega Sports alternative)
Seriously, the one question I was always asked when talking about Dreamcast was did it have Fifa.
They also advertised online play in Europe before there were any online games instead of showing their graphical superiority. Idiots.
No Fifa in Europe (or a good Sega Sports alternative)
Seriously, the one question I was always asked when talking about Dreamcast was did it have Fifa.
They also advertised online play in Europe before there were any online games instead of showing their graphical superiority. Idiots.
They sold 7 million world wide, with 2.5 million coming from the US alone.
The figure you are citing comes from people misquoting Sam Pettus, who was citing sales in a single territory.
Of the 154 games released on the Mega CD, only 38 are FMV games, and that number is even smaller if we're not counting stuff like Jeopardy, Wing Commander, or Snatcher as FMV games.
DAREALGUMMY
Member
Dead or Alive 2, Shenmue and others say differently.
Fredrik
Member
PS2. Everyone waited for PS2 with it's hyped up Emotion Engine instead of getting the Dreamcast a year earlier, it didn't matter that DC had much better picture quality and prettier games for a year after the PS2 had launched, people had already invested in the PS2 because of the hype and there were no going back and Sega had no money to compete in ads etc either.
Agreed.
PS2 hype was incredible, Sony came out with thouse billion zillion polygons stats and game mags ran wild with crap like OMG EMOTION ENGINE PS2 GAMES WILL HAVE EMOTION !!!!
PeakPointMatrix
Member
DVD support on the PS2 and a lot of burned trust from gamers due to Sega dropping and handling the Saturn so poorly. On top of all this, Sega's financial trajectory was set to implode regardless of how well the console performed. Really, there's no mystery as to why.
Except the decision to discontinue the device was made before that list of games existed...
Until 2001, though, DC games were prettier than their PS2 counterparts. The original Soul Calibur and Shenmue blew minds at the time.
I remember there being little to no fanfare when it launched in Australia. I got it from a mates game shop and I was the only person to buy one there on launch day.
This is the breakdown of the Dreamcast launch in Australia/NZ, quite a mess.
No advertising or marketing...suicide.
http://www.retrogamingaus.com/wiki/index.php?title=Dreamcast
This is the breakdown of the Dreamcast launch in Australia/NZ, quite a mess.
No advertising or marketing...suicide.
http://www.retrogamingaus.com/wiki/index.php?title=Dreamcast
travisbickle
Member
Hellraider
Member
Living in Greece I also didn't know anyone who bought a PS2 (and PS1 before that) game, while everyone had the console. I don't think piracy is worth mentioning as a reason the dreamcast failed unless we have some hard data.
A Black Falcon
Member
No, that's totally wrong.
US (NPD numbers, from a time when the NPD was not entirely reliable):
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=130137491#post130137491
Terry Travis said:
Also (from later in that thread)
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=130207634&postcount=64
The key here is the claim of 1.45 million shipped to the US. I thought it was higher, myself -- the SCD and its games seem more, not less, common than the Saturn here, and the Saturn sold 2 million in the US -- but it's believable, I guess.
Japan:
http://segaretro.org/Sega_Mega-CD#Japan says 100,000 sales in the first year of release, that is late '91 to late '92. The system pretty much died in Japan after the end of '94, with VERY few releases in 1995.
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/メガCD Japanese Wikipedia says 380,000 Mega CD systems sold in Japan overall. I don't know if that source is reliable or not, though; http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/メガCD#cite_note-2 Isn't that a European magazine? The number does sound accurate however. 380,000 is 11% of the Genesis/MD's Japanese sales total, a pretty good attach rate for an addon. The Turbo CD did do better in Japan, but even that didn't sell to a majority of the base PC Engine's ownership base.
Europe:
Unknown, except that only 60,000 Sega CDs had sold in the UK as of August 1993, if citation #11 is accurate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_CD#Launch Considering that in the UK sales weren't great, and that the Genesis sold 7-8 million systems or so in Europe, I have trouble imagining that more than a few hundred thousand SCDs could have sold in Europe by the end of its life in early '96.
Corroborating that, Sega-Retro says:
4% of ~7.5 million is 300,000.
You add these numbers up and you get 2.13 million systems sold. Add to that the unknown but surely low Australian (unless they were included in Europe?) and Brazilian numbers to get a total that's probably only slightly higher than that 2.13 million number. If I under-estimated European Genesis sales (and thus also EU SCD sales as well), then add a little bit for that. But those numbers are probably small, so even 2.5 million total sold is perhaps an overly-optimistic guess. I wish it was higher, but these numbers are all very plausible.
That 2.7 million number may or may not come from there, but that it sold 2 point something million systems doesn't.Krejlooc said:
They were many of the most popular games, though. It's easy to find the FMV games in large numbers, but the better, non-FMV stuff is often much less common!
easy answer: ps2
detailed answer: sega made some of the worst mistakes in industry history in the early/mid-90s... despite learning the error of their ways and finally making a forward-thinking system with the dreamcast, it was too little too late, and the capital wasn't there to support it going into that gen
detailed answer: sega made some of the worst mistakes in industry history in the early/mid-90s... despite learning the error of their ways and finally making a forward-thinking system with the dreamcast, it was too little too late, and the capital wasn't there to support it going into that gen
Now you are saying the megadrive/genesis only sold 21 million units world wide?
The Dreamcast didn't fail. Sega failed. They ran out of money, couldn't afford to support their own console anymore, and had to go third-party just to keep the lights on. That's the truth of it.
For many distraught Sega fans, the spirit of Dreamcast lived on through the Xbox. At least for a little while, anyway.
For many distraught Sega fans, the spirit of Dreamcast lived on through the Xbox. At least for a little while, anyway.
I've read this before. Why, exactly? Wasn't Dreamcast a heavily arcade-like system? That's not really how I'd describe the Xbox.
It was a combination of varying factors but I personally think the big one was the impending release of the ps2. I lost count of the people I knew who, when asked, said they were waiting for the PS2.
Out of a large group of gamers I think 4 of us ended up with one. There were more of us with imported PS2s than DC by the time the PS2 launched in the USA.
It sold well early on, but Sega seemed to burn through the early adopters incredibly quickly.
Out of a large group of gamers I think 4 of us ended up with one. There were more of us with imported PS2s than DC by the time the PS2 launched in the USA.
It sold well early on, but Sega seemed to burn through the early adopters incredibly quickly.
Lmao!
Rabid Wolverine
Member
3 words.
Sega of Japan.
Everything they did from 32x and Saturn led to them losing so much cash they could'nt support their products.
If they listened to Sega of America things would have been a lot different.
Sega of Japan.
Everything they did from 32x and Saturn led to them losing so much cash they could'nt support their products.
If they listened to Sega of America things would have been a lot different.
Soul Calibur, Dead or Alive 2, Shenmue, better looking multiplats than PS1 versions of Resident Evil 2, 3, etc.
ComputerMKII
Banned
The PS2 was too strong and I bet Sega's finances were too weak.
I mean, this is what the FIRST day of the PS2 looked like:
I mean, this is what the FIRST day of the PS2 looked like:
SiegfriedFM
Member
Sega made a deal with Microsoft and released a ton of ports and new games like Shenmue 2, Jet Set Radio and Panzer Dragoon Orta. PS2 eventually got some of the games too like Crazy Taxi, Rez and Virtua Tennis 2, but they were often poor conversions.
ConanTheKing
Member
I always debated this, I couldn't imagine something as lovely as Shenmue 2 on the PS2, at the same time however, I couldn't imagine something as detailed as Metal Gear Solid 3 on the Dreamcast.
ComputerMKII
Banned
What's GCN?
The DC was not competing with PS1 and N64, it belongs to a gen ahead and its natural competitors would be the PS2 and the GC.
It did have some of the best games that gen, yes.
Near perfect to perfect I'd say. DC had similar architecture with the NAOMI, which was the Sega made arcade hardware these games run on, that's why it worked so good.
Well, it did have a good launch cause it launched a tad later in the west and it had gathered a pretty decent library.
You don't really get it I'm afraid. Were you present at that time? I mean actively gaming, following gaming news etc?
The Dreamcast's worst enemy was Sony's aggressive marketing even before the PS2 released. Sony would put bullshots, even CG captures and would say that this is what games running on PS2 look like. The magazines at the time, and those early corners of the internet that did gaming, were full of people saying that they'll keep their money because the real deal is coming and it's called PS2, reposting those same CG shots at a viral rate and making the DC seem like a generation or two behind of the upcoming console. When this all proved to be bull, the fight was already lost, and the momentum for Sony was already gained.
The DC was one of the last pure game consoles, that put gameplay first, and that committed resources to different teams to come up with new ideas that would complement the hardware, whatever that might mean to you, or remind you.
The DC was the stuff that dreams are made, but the gaming community was too eager to abandon it as underpowered, and in prospect of a superpowerful system that never came.
Then a very panicked Sega finished it off.
The story of the DC is a sad story of false promises, shady marketing, and a community that had taken its first steps into the second and worst console war that is still raging.
The DC was the herald of a brighter future that never came.
ResidentDante
Member
Sega GT 2002, Crazy Taxi 3, Panzer Dragoon Orta, Jet Set Radio Future, Gun Valkyrie, Otogi 1 & 2, ToeJam and Earl III, The House of the Dead III, Spikeout: Battle Street etc. There were a lot of Sega games for the console, and let the Dreamcast-type games continue there when the console itself died out.
Gamecube.
yep!
Gamecube Nintendo.
Legacy of mis-handling the Saturn so thoroughly.
The Playstation caught Sega by surprise, the Saturn was strong in 2D games, perhaps the strongest of all time in Japan. To compete with PSX in NA/EU though, Sega felt they had to promote the 3D aspect of the machine and most of the Japanese library never made it to the west due to a policy of refusing the release of 2D titles. This left them with a machine which was hard to program and little to no games. And so, the Saturn died all because of Sega.
The Dreamcast never had a chance against the PS2 by the time that battle came.
The Playstation caught Sega by surprise, the Saturn was strong in 2D games, perhaps the strongest of all time in Japan. To compete with PSX in NA/EU though, Sega felt they had to promote the 3D aspect of the machine and most of the Japanese library never made it to the west due to a policy of refusing the release of 2D titles. This left them with a machine which was hard to program and little to no games. And so, the Saturn died all because of Sega.
The Dreamcast never had a chance against the PS2 by the time that battle came.
BuckRobotron
Member
As a fan of the DC Metropolis Street Racer, Jet Grind Radio, and Saturn Panzer Dragoon...when it was announced PGR, JSRF and Panzer Dragoon Orta would be coming to Xbox that made it one of the easiest console purchases in my long gaming history. I was also looking forward to Gunvalkyrie.
Prime crotch
Banned
Publishers were kinda mad at SEGA too, so they backed Sony's horse, that SCUD piloting machine of the ps2
PastorOfMuppets
Banned
This is exaggerated but it isn't completely off base. I think the amount of money they poured into Shenmue would have required every Dreamcast owner to buy three copies of the game to break even.
I think what's even more amazing is that they still made a Shenmue 2 after that.
Ah, I see. Thanks :]
Wow, for real? That was an incredibly dumb decision.
BAW
Banned
Most of the money had already been spent to plan Shenmue 2 even before the 1st part was released, so they kinda just rolled with that.
Crimsonclaw111
Member
It makes me wonder how long or what games the DC would've received had it survived long enough. If I remember correctly, GTA3 was supposed to be for the DC before being ported to PS2.
CrazedProfessional
Member
The Sega Saturn is the reason why the Dreamcast failed. Also the Genesis life-support era.
A great analysis. Couldn't have said it better myself. I fucking love the DC, but from a business standpoint Sega should have packed it up after the Saturn and invested the money in buying up and recruiting 3rd part talent. Doesn't change what a great system the DC was and still is though.
tkscz
Member
This.
Sega was pretty good a squandering money away, even after banking with the Genesis/Mega Drive, they kept spending money on failed add-ons and unfinished consoles. The Saturn was a super expensive mess of a console (it wasn't bad per say, but it was rushed and had 3D forced onto it after the announcement of the PS1) that bombed hard. Sega was tight on cash and the Dreamcast had to succeed no matter what. Sadly when the PS2 arrived, Dreamcast sales stopped, and Sega could not afford to push it and so had to drop it.
Let's not forget the Sega CD, Neptune, 32X/CD stand alones. They just kept making crap that no one wanted.
PastorOfMuppets
Banned
It was a bad business decision yes. But Sega was doing a lot of crazy shit at the time. I was a PC-only gamer back then (and still am) and they were the only console game company that was intriguing to me. Nobody was doing the crazy shit Sega was pulling out back then. They actually released a bass fishing simulator that came with a fishing rod controller. And it was fun. Unfortunately, that sort of stuff doesn't sell well. None of the franchises from the Dreamcast era are still around today even though most of them got good reviews.