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[LaughingStock]

PS2 didn't fail. Neither did PS1.

 

[RoadHazard]

Because that's not the reason it failed. It didn't help though.

 

[Sleepwalker]

Am one of those people who owned a PS2 and never had an original game. Would buy burnt dvd games for $1 or less. I also had my OG xbox pimped full of emulators.Never liked the dreamcast tho.

no ragrets.


Only console I kept unmodded was the gamecube.

 

[pramod]

PS1 piracy definitely was not "easy" in the beginning. When it became easy the PS1 already sold a hundred gazillion units so it was not a factor.

DC became super easy to pirate like within a year of release in America. Before it even had a chance to make a solid foothold. The situations aren't the same. No other console had to suffer so much rampant piracy so early in its life cycle.

 

[darkangel-212559]

I really liked it in that weird janky Japanese style, finished it over a weekend.

Spoiler

I then rejected it for a European release, as it didn't make commercial sense

It was pretty good. But then I played the JP version. I had no idea what the hell was going on but I still remember it fondly. That was still the golden era of imports though. Good times to be in the import scene. The DC/PS2 era had some real import only classics. As I was based in the UK that pretty much meant anything decent had to be imported way ahead of its UK release or in the case of D2 was import only.

 

[poodaddy]

Somebody better tell Steam that they aren't gonna make any money, what with piracy being so prevalent on PC and what not. The PC is gonna fail any day now as a result.......

......

..........

...............

Just any day now.

 

[Arsic]

Yeah but my Tamagachi memory card was so sick!

 

[MrFunSocks]

Piracy played a part for sure, but the real reason it didn't stand a chance was because of Sony's moneyhatting of third parties, mainly EA.

 

[SegaShack]

You forget how long it took to download a game in 1999/2000. Piracy is ALWAYS brought up for why Dreamcast failed, yet look at the PS1, Nintendo DS, etc.

Sega was already in a bad place before the system came out.

 

[Magnific0giganticus]

DC was missing tons of key third party studios. And no DVD drive which at the time was a big thing.

I think the only key studio that supported DC was Capcom.

All these studios didnt support them (or released hardly any games)

- Namco
- Konami
- EA
- Square

Namco?? You know they develop Soul Calibur, right?

The Dreamcast had enough third party support, much better than the N64, and not like they needed much more to be competitve. It had tons of exclusives and great games. It had the best Sports series, it was the console king of fighters, some great Racing games, adventure games, RPGs, it had Quake III arena with online multiplayer, it had Tomb Raider...what killed the Dreamcast was piracy. The Dreamcast was sold at a loss at US$199 at launch. Think about that. That's not a typo. US$199. No console launched that cheap ever (adjusted for inflation). They needed to recoup the losses by selling software, but they simply couldn't sell enough, fast enough. Piracy killed them in the crib.

 

[Bluecondor]

I remember buying a Dreamcast in college and running into a buddy on campus I hadn't seen in awhile the next day. Told him I had picked one up and he just said "don't buy any games for it, stop over to my apartment later tonight".

Went over that night and he dropped two 50-count spindles of burned CDs in my hands. I had no idea what they are he goes "that's pretty much every game out right now, and a bunch of Japan-only stuff. I marked which ones need a boot loader, there's a boot loader disc on top".

That pretty much consumed my weekend, going through every single game and trying them all out. We'd link up from time to time and he'd drop another spindle of games on me, I got exposed to so many random Japanese games it was amazing. I don't think I ever purchased a single game for the Dreamcast and am the reason it died.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

Not to derail the thread, but are you telling me that a college acquaintance of your's upon hearing that you bought a DC ran home after seeing you and burned 100 CDs over the next few hours in preparation for your evening "link-up"? Then, "from time-to-time," he would suddenly burn 50 additional CDs for you?

I remember burning CDs back then. It was a hassle. Also, it sounds like he bought the CDs on his own dime and never charged you anything?

Bottom line - you either won the "acquaintance lottery" with this dude or he had some other interesting motivation for why he made such a superhuman effort to personally ensure that you had every DC game in existence.

 

[Sorcerer]

Please tell me you played D2! PLEASE!

I could not wait for that game to come out. Bought it game store that sold imports, had them mod my Dreamcast, proceeded to beat the game without knowing a single word of Japanese. (There where no strategy guides or any help online at the time). It's kind of fascinating what I thought I perceived of the story to what the story actually was when it finally came to the U.S..

 

[Sorcerer]

I always heard that Sega was still paying for its past mistakes with too much failed hardware. The Dreamcast sold well in the U.S. but Sega of Japan pulled the plug regardless. I wish Sega was still with us today as a hardware manufacture, probably the only way I would ever purchase a console again.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

DC died because major publishers, including famously EA, ignored it in order to make sure they were first in line to release on PS2. To be fair to those publishers, before the DC Sega fucked around and managed to release the Sega CD and 32X add-ons for the Genesis and the Saturn and all were abject failures and Sega looked like idiots for constantly releasing half-baked hardware with hardly any support and expecting games to be published for 4 platforms at the same time.

If piracy could kill a platform, why did the PSP manage to sell 80 million units when it was arguably the most pirated system in history?

 

[The Pleasure]

It's remembered so much more fondly than it really deserves honestly. And I was a day one adopter.

Soul Calibur after Tekken 3 was life changing.

 

[Team Andromeda]

Piracy. And the fact that they designed a system that was so easily cracked.

Yes there was the competition from Sony, etc. But the DC was still selling well enough, I don't think there was ever any solid evidence that DC sales completely fell off the cliff once PS2 was released.

But the fact that anyone can burn their own DC discs at home with a simple CD burner, well, I don't know how Sega was going to overcome that. Once the news of DC being hacked came out it was like a dam broke, everyone was playing burnt DC games within a few weeks.
I think Sega saw the writing on the wall pretty quickly.

So what ultimately doomed Sega and DC was again, their own technical failures.

The PS was the most modded console in history in fact thanks to Piracy sales of the PS went up and also would imagine the many people bought an OG Xbox for its amazing emu
Piracy didn't kill the DC. SEGA wasn't selling enough hardware and that had little to do with Piracy and everything to do with people waiting for the PS2 and the killer showing of the MGS2

SEGA issues could be summed up with basically on day 1 of the PS2 hitting Japan or Europe PS2 overtook the DC userbase in those countries.

 

[Patrick S.]

I don't talk about it because it has been 15 years, and everybody already knows it *shrug*

PS1 piracy definitely was not "easy" in the beginning. When it became easy the PS1 already sold a hundred gazillion units so it was not a factor.

DC became super easy to pirate like within a year of release in America. Before it even had a chance to make a solid foothold. The situations aren't the same. No other console had to suffer so much rampant piracy so early in its life cycle.

It WAS easy. Christ, you didn't need a chip or action replay or anything with the swap trick you could do with the OG model.

 

[Alan Wake]

Dreamcast certainly had the games and the variety, especially in 2000 when the heavy hitters launched. But even if Sega's own studios were doing brilliantly at the time, they did miss support from some important third party studios. And people were moving away from arcade games, so arcade ports weren't doing it for people as they had before.

Most importantly: Sega did not have the money to market and hype the system when Sony rolled out the hype train for PS2. They've said so much themselves. If they had had Microsoft's deep pockets, they could've survived longer. Remember how much money Xbox was losing. I don't think piracy was even the top 5 reason the Dreamcast failed commercially.

 

[DGrayson]

Dreamcast failed cause Saturn launched early. Then DC was forced to launch early cause Saturn failed. Sega was playing catchup to Microsoft and Sony.

 

[Dream-Knife]

No one had faith in Sega hardware at the time.

As kids we were impressed by it's graphics, but it didn't have any games we wanted to play.

 

[Patrick S.]

No one had faith in Sega hardware at the time.

As kids we were impressed by it's graphics, but it didn't have any games we wanted to play.

It had lots of games I wanted to play. It had the awesome SEGA library. Daytona, Sega Rally, Crazy Taxi, Jet Set Radio, House of the Dead, Sonic Adventure, F355 Challenge, Virtua Fighter... Then it had Soul Calibur, Resident Evil Code Veronica, Power Stone, Metropolis Street Racer, Phantasy Star Online... And of course Shenmue, although you are right that nobody wanted to play that

 

[Dream-Knife]

It had lots of games I wanted to play. It had the awesome SEGA library. Daytona, Sega Rally, Crazy Taxi, Jet Set Radio, House of the Dead, Sonic Adventure, F355 Challenge, Virtua Fighter... Then it had Soul Calibur, Resident Evil Code Veronica, Power Stone, Metropolis Street Racer, Phantasy Star Online... And of course Shenmue, although you are right that nobody wanted to play that

None of those appealed to me or the kids in my class. 1999 we were all about Pokemon, Smash 64, Goldeneye, the original Rainbow Six, MGS, and Crash 3.

But you know, everyone is different.

I like the aesthetic of the Dreamcast. I'd pick one up if I woke up in 1999.

 

[Patrick S.]

None of those appealed to me or the kids in my class. 1999 we were all about Pokemon, Smash 64, Goldeneye, the original Rainbow Six, MGS, and Crash 3.

But you know, everyone is different.

I like the aesthetic of the Dreamcast. I'd pick one up if I woke up in 1999.

Yeah, true. I never got into Nintendo stuff, for example. Tried several times, buying a N64 with Mario 64 and Goldeneye day one, then later a 3DS XL and a Wii. But having different options is good, and I was super sad to see SEGA hardware go away.

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

PS1 piracy definitely was not "easy" in the beginning. When it became easy the PS1 already sold a hundred gazillion units so it was not a factor.

Nope. The swap trick was discovered pretty early, and by the end of 1996 modding PS1s was cake. PS1 piracy was absolutely huge.

 

[jimjonjimmy]

Not to derail the thread, but are you telling me that a college acquaintance of your's upon hearing that you bought a DC ran home after seeing you and burned 100 CDs over the next few hours in preparation for your evening "link-up"? Then, "from time-to-time," he would suddenly burn 50 additional CDs for you?

I remember burning CDs back then. It was a hassle. Also, it sounds like he bought the CDs on his own dime and never charged you anything?

Bottom line - you either won the "acquaintance lottery" with this dude or he had some other interesting motivation for why he made such a superhuman effort to personally ensure that you had every DC game in existence.

It's not as crazy as it sounds. I've had similar experiences. There was a guy I knew that kept buying me games for whatever reason. My only guess is that he was desperate for friends. Another guy I knew would randomly give me games he had. I suspected he stole them or something. Like one day he got Four Swords Adventures for the Gamecube in box. Brought it over to my house we play it a bit till he said he had to go and he told me to keep it. This was within the week it came out in box with the GCN to GBA link cable and everything.

 

[PleaseDontBanMe]

I'm not sure if Piracy was the real reason

I honestly didn't even know how to burn CDs in 1999 (didn't learn until 2001) and I was probably old enough to know how to do such a thing

and if I didn't know then I know alot of others didn't also

also ur average home that wasn't middle or upper class just started getting PCs in the late 90s

we couldn't afford them shits in 1992 like u rich folks on here

 

[RafterXL]

Pirating doesn't kill consoles. In fact, I think the Playstation brand benefitted greatly because of it. Everyone I knew back in the day had a PS and big ass binder of copied games.

I'm also shocked no one has mentioned the fact that a monkey can put custom firmware on a Switch and download the entire catalogue straight from the system. Privacy hasn't put a dent in Switch profits.

 

[Boss Mog]

The PSP was easily piratable and yet was very successful, The Vita was not and yet it failed miserably. I seriously doubt piracy had anything to do with the DC's failure.

 

[SkylineRKR]

Piracy started somewhere in 2000. Dreamcast was already losing steam by then. The console didn't have killer apps, no mass market appeal, it launched with the PS2 on the horizon. Saturn burned lots of goodwill already. Many stores didn't even carry Dreamcast. It never stood a chance.

 

[nkarafo]

It didn't kill the PS1 so no.

 

[nkarafo]

Check out this video….I’ve never been so glued to a real-time graph….

That's awesome but doesn't include handhelds.

 

[TheGodfather07]

what real reason? sega made bad choices and PlayStation murdered it. end of story.

 

[Yoshichan]

Dreamcast died because of Final Fantasy VIII and the release of PS2.

It's kind of a "you had to be there"-thing tbh.

 

[nush]

I'm not sure if Piracy was the real reason

I honestly didn't even know how to burn CDs in 1999 (didn't learn until 2001) and I was probably old enough to know how to do such a thing

and if I didn't know then I know alot of others didn't also

also ur average home that wasn't middle or upper class just started getting PCs in the late 90s

we couldn't afford them shits in 1992 like u rich folks on here

Mass market piracy did not come to the PS1 until the price of the CD burners and media became affordable. There was a big window between 1995 and those market conditions allowing piracy to flourish.

Mod chips did not become cheap and available until around 1997.

PlayStation one did not have piracy until a lot later in it's life than the Dreamcast. But Piracy was not the reason for the Dreamcasts failure.

 

[jufonuk]

DS had piracy and that sold 100+ million units
I think it was due to sega stuffing up the Saturn and the 32X add on plus some other popular franchises on the PlayStation (fifa madden etc)

 

[HoodWinked]

It was definitely what ultimately ended the console. The Dreamcast would have still failed but it likely would have been able to go the full life span with acceptable operating losses.

Dreamcast owners were more gaming tech savvy so more likely to have the capability to pirate.

 

[PhaseJump]

Dreamcast failed because gamers didn't trust Sega to support it. They killed Genesis, Gamegear, 32X, and Saturn support. They wasted money all over the place. They helped kill 3DFX.

The DC was slow to build things back, but they killed themselves by announcing the discontinuation. It couldn't compete with a low price, broke bank account, and lack of DVD player hype churned up by Sony.

Piracy was the PS1's turf. You could copy discs. It wasn't widespread on DC without broadband and know-how to get the scene's ripped games that fit on blank discs, already after the DC was failing.


If you want to blame piracy and technical incompetence though. Be funny about it. Blame Japanese Karaoke support.

 

[Patrick S.]

Yeah you could copy PS1 Discs, but in Spain where I lived, a copied game would cost 4000 Pesetas, more or less €30 per disk, a CD burner with SCSI controller would set you back the equivalent of €700, and a blank CD was like €5. It was certainly not in everyone's reach. I know because I had a burner and used to sell assloads of copies

 

[nush]

Piracy has never killed any format. Be it music, videogames or video it's just a symptom of popularity and availability. The corporate lie of "One pirated copy = one lost sale" is bullshit as they think they have lost sales but the reality is the majority of people that resort to piracy can't or are unable to actually afford the real media (Or as much as they would like to consume). It's out of their price range.

 

[Trimesh]

PS1 piracy definitely was not "easy" in the beginning. When it became easy the PS1 already sold a hundred gazillion units so it was not a factor.

DC became super easy to pirate like within a year of release in America. Before it even had a chance to make a solid foothold. The situations aren't the same. No other console had to suffer so much rampant piracy so early in its life cycle.

The CD player swap was discovered within a few weeks of the machine's release - I think that qualifies as being pretty "easy". The first modchips were available within a few months - certainly before July 1995, since I can remember people wondering if the (then new) SCPH-3000 model was going to block them (it didn't, although it did add an extra boot check that complicated disc swaps).

 

[Majukun]

dude, the playstation was sold directly with the chip inside at the time, the ds and wii were some of the most pirated consoles of all time.
piracy doesn't make a console fail, in fact quite the opposite.

 

[acm2000]

for me the 2 main reasons it failed are a) sega geared it towards arcade experiences, which was a dead move, and b) sonys absolutel bullshit nonsense pr pre ps2 release.

 

[KormaChameleon]

Better 3rd party support and lack of DVD drive are the reasons why I believe that the Dreamcast failed. Yet, it remains in top of my favourite console.

 

[Harlock]

This episode of They Create Worlds has a great background about the corporate side of Sega between 1993/2003:

Dreams of Sega | They Create Worlds

TCW Podcast Episode 127 - Dreams of Sega We look at the rapid decline of SEGA. A company mired in infighting between executives. This led to the disasterous launch of the Sega Saturn. Which was launched early as a panic move when faced with the competition from the SONY PlayStation. SEGA...

podcast.theycreateworlds.com

 

[darkangel-212559]

All I know is I remember waiting in line to buy one when I was a kid. This other kid saw me in line with the DC box and said to his mum how he was waiting for a PS2.

I thought haha the jokes on you, I have the better console!

I guess in the end the joke was definitely on me.

 

[Kokoloko85]

Not really.

Reasons

- No DVD player. When the better competition had a DVD player at such an important time. DVD was the long awaited success to VHS, 90% of people had them in the end. It was bigger than gaming

- The PS2 arrived. THe PS1 and PS2 were commercial beasts and the PS2 success has yet to be replicated. The PS2 was stronger, better controller and had more popular IP like MGS2, Final Fantasy, Tekken, DMC, GTA, Gran Turismo etc

-Sega started with some decent 3rd party support with games like Soul Calibur, Street fighter and Resident Evil Code Veronica but in the end it wasn’t enought compared to what the PS2 and Gamecube were getting.

The Dreamcast had one of the best 1st party libraries of all time and awesome games all around.
Its one of my favourite consoels, it was Innovative with the first console to have real online gaming. I love it but the timing was wrong, Sega had internal issues and not enough 3rd party support. The competition had way too much power for 3rd parties to port there games on Dreamcast and the PS2 was the highest selling console of all time.

Bad timing, No DVD, internal issues and not enough power + the PS2 was the reasons it died. Microsoft was the final nail in the coffin too.

 

[Allforce]

Not to derail the thread, but are you telling me that a college acquaintance of your's upon hearing that you bought a DC ran home after seeing you and burned 100 CDs over the next few hours in preparation for your evening "link-up"? Then, "from time-to-time," he would suddenly burn 50 additional CDs for you?

I remember burning CDs back then. It was a hassle. Also, it sounds like he bought the CDs on his own dime and never charged you anything?

Bottom line - you either won the "acquaintance lottery" with this dude or he had some other interesting motivation for why he made such a superhuman effort to personally ensure that you had every DC game in existence.

Haha, he was more than an acquaintance. We were good friends in junior high and high school (and still are today!) and then went off to separate colleges. I transferred to his university a few years later and we linked up again so it was more like an old close friend I hadn't seen in awhile. I didn't just run into him for the first time in years or anything we hung out just had been awhile as school and work had us busy doing other shit.

I definitely don't think he ran home to burn 100 CDs LOL, pretty sure he had already done the deep dive on games and just gave me what he already was using and then burned copies for himself for whatever he had over time. And I was probably being hyperbolic about the future drops, we were definitely hanging out more then and he'd usually let me know like "oh yeah I burned you a copy of X, Y, and Z" and lay em on me when we'd see each other.

And yeah, no charge! He's a great guy and was pretty well off and generous (still is). Dude around this time had the first TiVo I'd ever seen, with the lifetime subscription! And an actual DVD collection which was pretty wild at the time, nobody really had those since they were pretty new.

 

[Rean no Kiseki]

"Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem.“ — Gabe Newell - 2011.

 

[Esppiral]

Piracy is what made the original PSX, PS2 and Xbox 360 so popular in most countries,so no, that's not the reason.

 

[Jimmy_liv]

idk. PS1 games were so easy to pirate....my 11 yr old ass was burning PS1 games in my families computer

Agreed but also you didn't need to chip DC games. They could literally be downloading, burnt and working on a console fresh out of the box.