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Why do so few people talk about the REAL reason the Dreamcast failed?

24 November something had changed.
The Playstation 2 had a Pre-launch
While outside the US the PS2 may have actually did damage prelaunch, it doesn't apply to the US, and places like the UK had similar problems with Sega making strange decisions.

The big thing US had that UK was missing was America had their football game but the UK didn't have theirs. If they did maybe DC might have had similar success as the US. Europe is the one region where lack of EA actually hurt the console big time.

The focus SoJ had to take off the Saturn to shift to Dreamcast is a direct correlation between Saturn starting to decline there and build-up for Dreamcast occurring, though. It's a very clear link IMO.

I wouldn't say PS1 uncertainty and N64 delay were the only major factors that helped SEGA in the 1994-1997 period (going by that logic, the N64 delay was also a major factor benefiting the PS1 especially in Japan). When a game like Virtua Fighter (and then VF2) has a near 1:1 attach ratio with system sales out of the gate, I think you have to contribute some of Saturn's early success in the Japan reason to SEGA's software output.

Especially considering that attach ratios were higher for Saturn than PS1 throughout the generation in that region, it wasn't just early unknowns with the PS1 and N64 being delayed which played big factors for Saturn, otherwise other systems like the Jaguar would've seen better sales, same with the PC-FX, and the 3DO would've lasted longer in the Japanese market than it did, too.
The Saturn fell behind not too long after it's early lead and games on both consoles generally sold more on PS1, sometimes by absurd margins.

And 1:1 VF sales got it an ltd of 600k~ games not 1:1 on playstation did better than that. The combination of N64 delay, Saturn releasing early enough with games buyers wanted, along with Sony being an unknown, was a very large part of why Saturn had almost 2 years of being just ahead of PS1 in japan. PS1 slipped ahead before FF7, which along with other titles made sure it stated ahead after they came out.

The momentum drop was like hitting a brick wall. That doesn't happen if the reason consumers were buying your machine before wasn't fickle. Sega sold most of Saturn's japanese LTD by mid 96 or so. It was free falling only selling 5,7~ million units, which Nintendo almost caught up to.

Also the Jaguar wasn't a thing in Japan, and 3DO started out the most expensive of the 3 then dropped to a similar price, considering that, it did pretty good in japan.

Thats one way to look at it, for sure. But a delay in Japan specifically would've given more time for Saturn, more time for bug-free Japanese DC launch and more units available at launch (NEC could've fulfilled their PowerVR2 manufacturing targets). An early '99 Japan/late '99 American launch doesn't change much for the Western side of things but could've really benefited Japan.
The thing is there wasn't anytime, Saturn was declining and the bleeding was getting worse, there was nothing Sega could do with the Saturn at that point.

Saturn went from 1.8 million late 96-97 to 600k~ sold during the 97-98 full period and by the time the DC was announced it was struggling to get past 200k for the 98 year, and ended up 300k at the end of it.

Sega had a reason to scrap the Saturn in pretty much every region it was released in.

But this was due to SEGA's own doing rushing the Dreamcast to market before a lot of their Japanese base or even large chunks of the Japanese gaming community were ready. A lot of Japanese Saturn owners felt betrayed by Dreamcast getting rushed to market, SEGA basically made the same mistake with Dreamcast in Japan they made for Saturn in the West as a result.

This could've been avoided and because so I do think they could've salvaged Japan but it'd of had to been done before the system released, and if that meant delaying it to early 1999 then so be it. Also IMO the Japanese DC launch should've had a JRPG present, maybe an upgraded version of Shining The Holy Ark or Panzer Dragoon Saga, or a preview for Skies of Arcadia included with each system as a decently-sized demo disc. That they didn't see the need for a JRPG early in its life when FFVII (and DQVII even moreso) took Japan by storm.

Maybe they could've gotten another Soul Hackers follow-up from Atlus, point is they needed a JRPG for the Japanese Dreamcast launch.

Even without rushing the DC didn't have much of a chance. Saturn gave them around two years of the only success any of their machines have had in the region, then fell apart.

As for Jrpg that's what Shenmue was supposed to be, the big huge graphically appealing rpg simulation (that's not really an rpg) that was supposed to bring people in so they end up buying Skies, Grandia II, or Sakura3 later. All if which didn't do too hot.

Sega would have needed different types of rpgs if they wanted to get more japanese buyers. It would have been better to launch with a fictional VF3 honestly. The issue with that is they rushed a third party to rush the port and didn't market it the way they should have. Goes double for the US release.

Iirc didn't Shenmue's R&D basically also serve to cover R&D for several other SEGA games like VF4? That's how I remember it being pitched a couple of times back in the day. Suzuki was basically building an engine in Shenmue that could serve for other SEGA games, and I think that's supported by later releases like Yakuza building off Shenmue's DNA.

So Shenmue as a whole may've not recouped its costs but the R&D put into its engine helped reduce dev costs for a lot of SEGA's future releases, at least that gen.



Yeah it's insane that they did seem to ignore soccer in the European region WRT Visual Concepts. That should've been a priority.

Not really, later yeah for some games, but the first Shenmue wasn't the only game that lost a ton of money, but so did Shenmue 2, and it's no surprise they tried to salvage the engine and assets in some cases, but they couldn't make that back.

It didn't help that Shenmue 2 was a huge money sink but they skipped the region that actually somewhat brought Shenmue. Instead they ported an Xbox version for america but with next to zero marketing.

It was also bringing gameplay people already said was archaic and chunky with the first game to a system that focused on flexible and relatively precise third and first person game controls

Given things like SoTC, Shenmue 2 likely would have done a bit better on PS2, but likely still wouldn't have been very successful.


Also yes. No soccer, no Cricket or Rugby for Europe, no Drift games or Baseball for Japan.

They really dropped the ball. Instead of sports Sega pushed out like 300 racing games, most very similar to each other, and fishing. Whoopie.
 
That makes sense. I think having Coke products in the Japanese release of Shenmue is a good example of Sega spending money that they probably could have saved



What's nuts about this is Pepsi Man In Japan was still popular, and was in the first Fighting Vipers iirc. They would have expanded reach and Pepsi would have helped market the game. A mutual deal.

Instead of Sega just having a one way money bonfire.
 
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ShinobiWan1

Member
What's nuts about this is Pepsi Man In Japan was still popular, and was in the first Fighting Vipers iirc. They would have expanded reach and Pepsi would have helped market the game. A mutual deal.

Instead of Sega just having a one way money bonfire.
I totally forgot about Pepsi Man! Yeah, it makes even less sense now!

 

Kaachan

Member
SEGA had no active presence in the American market and their consumer product sales collapsed globally after their release of Saturn. Also Japan launch fail in 1998.
Even though they were able to make a true next gen system with Dreamcast too many people had the PS1 and followed it up with the PS2, not to mention the PS2's DVD player
 
The real reason was the PlayStation 2.

In fact Sega was smart to launch the Dreamcast a year earlier or it would have bombed even harder.
 

supernova8

Banned
how to make a pretentious thread:
"Why is nobody talking about [insert thing nobody gives a shit about]"
"[insert game that was actually rated fairly, regardless of whether it was good or bad] is so underrated"
 
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ParaSeoul

Member
Because it was more than one reason. The Dreamcast was actually selling well but not well enough that Sega could continue supporting it with all they money they lost during the Saturn's lifetime.
 

Celine

Member
Piracy wasn't the reason DC failed.
With Dreamcast, Sega bet that by releasing a next-gen console earlier than competitors and being very aggressive from the start (read: losing a lot of money from hardware) they could build a large enough install base early on that would make their console business viable even when the rivals would release their next-gen systems.
What happened is that, the despite the heavy subsiding, DC sales were disappointing everywhere.
Even the record breaking launch in US, which is often cited as the sole case of good performance, in reality highlighted the fragility of the console.
In fact Sega sold more DC in the four months of the launch (September 1999-December 1999) than in the whole 2000 in US despite Sega desperately trying their best to move hardware (price cut from $199 to $149 in September 2000, free DC + keyboard if you subscribed for 18 months to SegaNet).
What happened is that Sega lost the bet and with it a lot of money to the point they couldn't keep going on.
 
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SEGA had no active presence in the American market
Uh, before the Saturn yes they did.

The real reason was the PlayStation 2.
Not in the US.

Because it was more than one reason. The Dreamcast was actually selling well but not well enough that Sega could continue supporting it with all they money they lost during the Saturn's lifetime.
They were losing money on the Dreamcast, wouldn't have mattered even if Sat just barely broke even.
 
Ah yes the US versus worldwide only the US matters.
Hell Sega would have to dominate that market to make even a dent. And they did not.
 
Sony had more support and better brand recognition due to them having tremendous market share in TV, Walkman, Discman, Stereos and so on.

On the same token, Sega was releasing console after console that were left unsupported. After the Sega Genesis you had 32X, Sega CD, Sega Saturn, then the Dreamcast. There were too many console failures in such a small amount of time. Something like that would create trust issues with your user base. Even if the Dreamcast did everything right, Sega was going to lose due to their missteps.
 
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Sony had more support and better brand recognition due to them having tremendous market share in TV, Walkman, Discman, Stereos and so on.

On the same token, Sega was releasing console after console that were left unsupported. After the Sega Genesis you had 32X, Sega CD, Sega Saturn, then the Dreamcast. There were too many console failures in such a small amount of time. Something like that would create trust issues with your user base. Even if the Dreamcast did everything right, Sega was going to lose due to their missteps.
Sega also made missteps with the Dreamcast and I feel people dont want to address that.

Also blaming CD and 32X is something people jump on without thinking but dont realize that CD was an warning about the Genesis success being short, and the 32X was created to try and remedy declining hardware and software sales and revenue.

32X wasn't just some random object Sega put out for no reason.
 

cireza

Banned
Sony had more support and better brand recognition due to them having tremendous market share in TV, Walkman, Discman, Stereos and so on.

On the same token, Sega was releasing console after console that were left unsupported. After the Sega Genesis you had 32X, Sega CD, Sega Saturn, then the Dreamcast. There were too many console failures in such a small amount of time. Something like that would create trust issues with your user base. Even if the Dreamcast did everything right, Sega was going to lose due to their missteps.
Sega-CD and Saturn weren't missteps. Dreamcast could have been profitable if they weren't throwing money around like they did. Saturn was profitable enough for them to actually break even, they should have prolonged its life by one year instead of rushing on the Dreamcast, buying off the shelf components that made the console expensive. Sales were actually fine for the console and games, but their investments were ridicoulously high and had no chance to turn into a profit. During Saturn period, they were much more reasonable with this.

Sega-CD was perfectly fine and had some pretty good success considering the fact it was an add-on and it was expensive. It was supported long enough in my opinion, same as Saturn. Only people who bought 32X got burnt.
 
The big thing US had that UK was missing was America had their football game but the UK didn't have theirs. If they did maybe DC might have had similar success as the US. Europe is the one region where lack of EA actually hurt the console big time.

Agreed; it's not like Visual Concepts couldn't of done a soccer game for that market, they were already making multiple sports games anyway. Maybe cut one of the non-football ones out to focus on soccer would've been a good idea, especially since they already knew EA would not have been a part of the system's library of developers or publishers.

The Saturn fell behind not too long after it's early lead and games on both consoles generally sold more on PS1, sometimes by absurd margins.

I mean that's not surprising all things considered.

And 1:1 VF sales got it an ltd of 600k~ games not 1:1 on playstation did better than that.

I get that, but the bigger point in mentioning it was to show how well Saturn's launch went in Japan, not a single PlayStation launch game moved as many copies as Virtua Fighter did for Saturn. So that was at least one thing the Saturn had going for it in its early period within the region.

The combination of N64 delay, Saturn releasing early enough with games buyers wanted, along with Sony being an unknown, was a very large part of why Saturn had almost 2 years of being just ahead of PS1 in japan. PS1 slipped ahead before FF7, which along with other titles made sure it stated ahead after they came out.

True but I was also never saying (or at least think I was never saying) that PS1 being an unknown and N64 being delayed didn't help the Saturn in the Japanese region. I mean the fact of it all is still that they had a small lead in Japan during that time for about a couple of years, although realistically they'd of needed a very large lead that whole time to make up for the below-average performance of the system in the West, which they didn't get for various reasons.

The momentum drop was like hitting a brick wall. That doesn't happen if the reason consumers were buying your machine before wasn't fickle. Sega sold most of Saturn's japanese LTD by mid 96 or so. It was free falling only selling 5,7~ million units, which Nintendo almost caught up to.

Fair enough, and in light of watch some documentaries on PC-Engine/Turbographx-16 I'm seeing a lot of similarities between PC-Engine and Saturn in the Japanese region when it comes to commercial performance in their lifecycles on the market.

Also the Jaguar wasn't a thing in Japan, and 3DO started out the most expensive of the 3 then dropped to a similar price, considering that, it did pretty good in japan.

Eh, I still don't think it can be said 3DO did "pretty good" in Japan; even if sales numbers picked up with the price drop, their business model was much different from other systems and manufacturers NEEDED to make money on the hardware sales. The rate in which the price cuts happened plus the amount would suggest those manufacturers weren't making profit on the console sales, and they definitely weren't on software sales, so that doesn't sound like a "pretty good" scenario overall for the system even in the Japanese region.

Although that being said, getting a lot more units out around the region increased brand presence which would've been beneficial for M2 if it actually released, that's one possible reason I can see why the 3DO Company cut prices as much as they did. Sadly the M2 console never came to be.

The thing is there wasn't anytime, Saturn was declining and the bleeding was getting worse, there was nothing Sega could do with the Saturn at that point.

Saturn went from 1.8 million late 96-97 to 600k~ sold during the 97-98 full period and by the time the DC was announced it was struggling to get past 200k for the 98 year, and ended up 300k at the end of it.

Sega had a reason to scrap the Saturn in pretty much every region it was released in.

Earlier I might've more strongly disagreed with this but I might be more inclined to agree with this notion nowadays. However, I still think a delay for Dreamcast into early '99 for Japan would've done well for the platform there overall.

If you look back at the release schedule for Japanese Dreamcast titles, LOTS of games got delayed, some delayed incredibly hard. In time this affected the system's performance in Japan especially once Japanese gamers started getting ready for the PS2 around the latter back half of '99. With a delay to early '99 the Dreamcast would've had a more consistent release schedule which would've gone over better with customers.

As for Saturn, I agree that a DC delay would in no way meant "saving" the Saturn in Japan or massively boosting its marketshare, but that's not the point. A little more time dedicated for Saturn in the region would've garnered more goodwill from Sega players in the region towards Dreamcast. And once again to get back to Dreamcast, the delay would've also given them more time to produce additional chips; I forget if it was the PowerVR2 or SH-4 that was the problem, but one of those two could not get manufactured at high enough capacities hence Sega had to cut launch stock in Japan. A delay into early '99 would've ensured a fully-stocked launch.

As for Jrpg that's what Shenmue was supposed to be, the big huge graphically appealing rpg simulation (that's not really an rpg) that was supposed to bring people in so they end up buying Skies, Grandia II, or Sakura3 later. All if which didn't do too hot.

Well that's mostly due to Shenmue's commercial failure in the region and Sega not doing much marketing for the other games there, most likely.

Sega would have needed different types of rpgs if they wanted to get more japanese buyers. It would have been better to launch with a fictional VF3 honestly. The issue with that is they rushed a third party to rush the port and didn't market it the way they should have. Goes double for the US release.

Funny thing is Shenmue was originally a VF RPG, and I think you're right that launching with a VF RPG would've done better for them in the region vs. launching with Sonic Adventure. Shenmue should've kept the VF branding and IP tie-ins.

Not really, later yeah for some games, but the first Shenmue wasn't the only game that lost a ton of money, but so did Shenmue 2, and it's no surprise they tried to salvage the engine and assets in some cases, but they couldn't make that back.

It didn't help that Shenmue 2 was a huge money sink but they skipped the region that actually somewhat brought Shenmue. Instead they ported an Xbox version for america but with next to zero marketing.

Well, not all of Sega's bad business decisions went away with the Saturn :/

It was also bringing gameplay people already said was archaic and chunky with the first game to a system that focused on flexible and relatively precise third and first person game controls

To that end I think Shenmue II would've still worked for the platform if they improved the controls; in terms of game design and structure it actually wasn't that far off from other games of the time and actually had some innovations that other open-world games of the time didn't.

Given things like SoTC, Shenmue 2 likely would have done a bit better on PS2, but likely still wouldn't have been very successful.

It likely should've been a PS2 game, but I disagree with it not being too successful if such were the case. Keep in mind SoTC in particular didn't come out until 2005; a Shenmue II that came out on-time (roughly 2002, 2003 latest) wouldn't of been compared to a SoTC that didn't yet exist.

In Asian regions in particular I think Shenmue II on PS2 would've been a pretty big deal if the marketing was right, though probably still too soon for such a game to deeply penetrate the Western market at that time.
 
Sega-CD and Saturn weren't missteps. Dreamcast could have been profitable if they weren't throwing money around like they did. Saturn was profitable enough for them to actually break even, they should have prolonged its life by one year instead of rushing on the Dreamcast, buying off the shelf components that made the console expensive. Sales were actually fine for the console and games, but their investments were ridicoulously high and had no chance to turn into a profit. During Saturn period, they were much more reasonable with this.

Sega-CD was perfectly fine and had some pretty good success considering the fact it was an add-on and it was expensive. It was supported long enough in my opinion, same as Saturn. Only people who bought 32X got burnt.
I think this depends strongly on what region you were in, though. Also I've been watching a few other documentaries (PC-Engine focused) and they brought something up I've been reconsidering: too often we look at these systems from the perspective of collectors and people engaging with them well after the fact, versus putting ourselves directly in the shoes of customers going to stores to buy them back in the day, and that may lead us to clouded judgement in terms of market performance and why systems did/didn't do well commercially, in spite of what library quality they have nowadays since we can easily access any of their games to play anytime.

In totality I'd say the Sega CD is a really good system (well, add-on actually) with a good handful of high-quality releases, but if you were in America during its commercial period leading up to 32X, looking at the release schedule for software, specific software releases, the timing of those releases (in comparison with software for other systems releasing at that time), the price for that software etc., the Sega CD probably wasn't a "perfectly fine" option for most customers. And that can probably be said for it globally, in fact.

Again, in hindsight and totality, well after all the software is available and its commercial lifespan ended, the Sega-CD's a fantastic system especially with the Japanese releases factored in. But realistically, a lot of those Japanese releases didn't come to America during 1992 - 1994, and a lot of the games for it in general had to compete against SNES/SFC, Genesis/MegaDrive, and PC-Engine games coming out around the same time in terms of perceived value, cost, and marketing.

Would all of this make me consider the Sega-CD a misstep? Well again, it depends. It did somewhat fracture the Genesis/MegaDrive install base between those with the add-on and those without it. That's always going to cause some issue for customers and developers. Also arguably the budget put towards Sega-CD and its software could've been put towards more Genesis/MegaDrive software, or paying for licensing rights of 3P SNES/SFC exclusives that might not've gotten ports to Genesis/MegaDrive for particular reasons (such as contracts with Nintendo). Just imagine what reallocating some of that Mega-CD R&D and production budget could've done for MegaDrive in Japan if Sega, say, licensed out Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest ports to MegaDrive in that region published and marketed by Sega themselves.

Alas, that is the benefit of hindsight on our behalf.
 

cireza

Banned
the Sega CD probably wasn't a "perfectly fine" option for most customers. And that can probably be said for it globally, in fact.
I disagree with this. The proposal here in Europe felt very solid to me, and it was the first CD console available at a large scale to us. It was truly something. Overall, I think that the Western strategy was pretty strong with this console, like it or not, and the support was alright overall.

It did somewhat fracture the Genesis/MegaDrive install base between those with the add-on and those without it. That's always going to cause some issue for customers and developers. Also arguably the budget put towards Sega-CD and its software could've been put towards more Genesis/MegaDrive software, or paying for licensing rights of 3P SNES/SFC exclusives that might not've gotten ports to Genesis/MegaDrive for particular reasons (such as contracts with Nintendo).
I am going to disagree again. Even if the Mega-CD was available, support for the MegaDrive was huge and did not falter in any way. People who had the add-on had the choice to buy CD or cartridges games, both were perfectly fine. There was no fracture. Third party support was perfectly fine on MegaDrive and I don't find that we missed anything major, throwing money at them would have been a waste.

I find that SEGA managed very well the MegaDrive, Mega-CD, Game Gear and Master System overall, and the choices of which game to put on which system were pretty good.
 
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Sophist

Member
Dreamcast was discontinued before the release of GTA3 and Final Fantasy 10 which are the two games who truly launched the PS2. No way Dreamcast would have compete.
 

cireza

Banned
Dreamcast was discontinued before the release of GTA3 and Final Fantasy 10 which are the two games who truly launched the PS2. No way Dreamcast would have compete.
It is not about competing. It is about not driving your business towards its end, by accepting covering a smaller market and having a profitable business with it. This should have been possible, but SEGA burnt all their cash back then. Even SNK with the Neo Geo managed to last until 2004...
 
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Star-Lord

Member
If cracking/pirating DC games was easy, then cracking/pirating DS games is like breathing air, yet that system went on to be one of the best-selling units of all time. DC flopped because it didn't have support from the bigger studios.
 

SkylineRKR

Member
DC could never compete. It felt like a system that was in no mans land. It was superior to the N64 and PS1, which were 3 and 4 years old, but if you compare it to PS2, Xbox and GC the DC falls really short. It had kind of pathetic storage, though GC didn't have much more but also suffered because of it. GC however was very powerful and Nintendo's own games are always tapping into the hardware perfectly. Xbox was extremely powerful and even PS2 could render games like MGS2, ZoE2, GT3, AC4 and Silent Hill 3. DC's textures, shaders, lighting etc aren't close.

So what if the DC could hang on. I wonder how it would fare. It was a much slower system, with less raw power. I just can't see how DC was going to run games like Winning Eleven, Burnout 3, Tony Hawk 3, MGS etc. The PS2 and GC already had to cut corners to run the likes of Splinter Cell, I wonder what would've been left for the DC. Take any random third party game from the 2002-2005 era, they were all far ahead technically.

DC worked best in 1999-2000. With Naomi arcade ports and PS1 up ports like Soul Reaver which were pretty great. It was by far the most impressive system on the market, delivering arcade perfect ports of HOTD2 and Hydro Thunder. But the tech in those other systems (finalized about a year afterward starting with PS2) was something else. If we go by GFLOPS, then the DC was at 1.4 while the PS2 was over 6, not to mention the other two systems. Ofcourse DC had its boons, such as the AA solution and VGA support, some games worked better on DC but there are also games that worked best on PS2 (ZoE2 and MGS2 due to the fillrate), GC (Rogue Leader, RE4) and Xbox (Splinter Cell).
 
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th4tguy

Member
Sega was still heavily divided between Japan hq and us. While sales were good in us, they were never good in Japan and it was Japan hq that made the call to pull support.
Piracy was a big deal but it hadn’t become serious enough at the time that they pulled support.
 
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Mr Rawnch

Neo Member
DC could never compete. It felt like a system that was in no mans land. It was superior to the N64 and PS1, which were 3 and 4 years old, but if you compare it to PS2, Xbox and GC the DC falls really short. It had kind of pathetic storage, though GC didn't have much more but also suffered because of it. GC however was very powerful and Nintendo's own games are always tapping into the hardware perfectly. Xbox was extremely powerful and even PS2 could render games like MGS2, ZoE2, GT3, AC4 and Silent Hill 3. DC's textures, shaders, lighting etc aren't close.

So what if the DC could hang on. I wonder how it would fare. It was a much slower system, with less raw power. I just can't see how DC was going to run games like Winning Eleven, Burnout 3, Tony Hawk 3, MGS etc. The PS2 and GC already had to cut corners to run the likes of Splinter Cell, I wonder what would've been left for the DC. Take any random third party game from the 2002-2005 era, they were all far ahead technically.

DC worked best in 1999-2000. With Naomi arcade ports and PS1 up ports like Soul Reaver which were pretty great. It was by far the most impressive system on the market, delivering arcade perfect ports of HOTD2 and Hydro Thunder. But the tech in those other systems (finalized about a year afterward starting with PS2) was something else. If we go by GFLOPS, then the DC was at 1.4 while the PS2 was over 6, not to mention the other two systems. Ofcourse DC had its boons, such as the AA solution and VGA support, some games worked better on DC but there are also games that worked best on PS2 (ZoE2 and MGS2 due to the fillrate), GC (Rogue Leader, RE4) and Xbox (Splinter Cell).

I'm half and half with you on this.

If Sega Japan/USA had worked together -- yes it could have succeeded. In fact, they may have been able to save the extinct arcade scene. Sega could have competed as long as they continued to make software that suited Dreamcast and the Naomi hardware. The later versions of Soul Caliber that came to the PS2 and Xbox were not that far off from what the Dreamcast was capable of. The PS2 wouldn't start to stretch its legs until we got titles like Grand Tourismo 4, Metal Gear Solid 3, and Tekken 5. By then you are about 5 years (really six if you count the Japan release) into the console cycle and you're already thinking about making another machine.

The PS2 and PS3 both went through heavy revisions because things outside of its secondary core strengths (DVD and Blu-Ray) were really expensive. Things like card readers, fire-wire ports, *USB, and other peripherals. The kind of things that makes the Dreamcast look like a toy on a stat sheet but most people never used.

The Dreamcast showcased that it could run its library at peak performance. If they would've stayed the course with their IPs like Nintendo -- then they wouldn't need games like Splinter Cell. Keeping the console to $150 and software to $29.99 - $39.99 would have been compelling over its lifetime. Go back and play games like Ferrari 355 Challenge, Bass Fishing, Dave Mira BMX, and Tony Hawk 1. Would it be as powerful as the PS2 or Xbox ports? No, but powerful enough at that point to provide an option while building a successor.

Surely, if Nintendo kept itself alive with the GBA, DS, and 3DS -- Sega could've pulled off their own successes story.
 

SkylineRKR

Member
I don't fully agree with the PS2 statement. PS2 had a bit of a mediocre launch period. But, even the PS2 saw the likes of FFX, GTA3, GT3, MGS2, SH2 pretty much within the first 12 months. Which the PS5 and Series isn't going to match.

Anyway, I think the potential of PS2 was visible much earlier on. In fact, at launch already. I was impressed by the English version of TTT. It has an incredible IQ for PS2 standards. The floor textures, and backgrounds are arguable more impressive than those of SC. Not to mention it rendered 4 characters. SC stole its thunder by looking impressive earlier on, but SC actually ended up being one of the best looking DC games period. SSX was another PS2 game that was actually a good launch showcase, ironically started as a DC project. It pushed polygons, draw distance, animations etc I hadn't seen much on DC. MGS2 came out in 2001. It was a 60fps game, with impressive animations, FP mode and lots of particles. It was one of the most impressive games I have ever seen. GT3 was from this same period, and looks about as good as GT4. It was an incredible piece of software at the time.

I do agree that DC could succeed if it did its own thing. But for that it needed something to differentiate itself from the crowd, like the Wii did. DC did have its boons as I said, it also pushed online play to some extent (though here in Europe very minor), but in the end most games were just... games. Brilliant ones at that (Rez VR was one of my top 5 GOTG on PS4, its a DC game), but nothing completely different from the competition like Wii, or Switch. Yes, Seaman. But that was too obscure and too weird probably. Sega just doesn't have the library. Nintendo can always bank on huge Mario, Smash, Kart and Pokemon sales. Even on the failed Wii U those games were multi million sellers. Sonic sells, but they run its quality into the ground more often than not. Even back then, with mediocre Saturn games, Shuffle and I disliked SA1, personally.
 

ripeavocado

Banned
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.

Nobody talks about this “real” reason because is nonsense.
 

Mahnmut

Member
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.
This. Add to this the non existent communication from Sega : I remember that some people at my school didn’t even heard about the DC.
 
Back in early 2000 the dc was set next to the ps2 in stores and judging from my first look "I wasn't the only one seeing it this way bty" I came from psone era and looking for something different, I'd argue if without my prior experience with the psone I wouldn't asked this question cause it just natural to seek different experience , the dc looked from 0a console design and it's games an evolved psone console, that just how I felt back then , there's no such thing as parity back then , it's vital and bitter for the weaker console to get defeated by these factors instantly , no question.
 
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bit_blaster

Neo Member
It did decent in Japan like the Saturn, but it just failed in the west because PS1 catered to single player needs, N64 catered to the party crowd, and everyone was anticipating the PS2 and didn't want to risk investing in another Saturn type of flop. It also didn't help that the majority of games were mostly arcade type of stuff with the exception of a few rare gems like Skies Of Arcadia.
 
I get that, but the bigger point in mentioning it was to show how well Saturn's launch went in Japan, not a single PlayStation launch game moved as many copies as Virtua Fighter did for Saturn. So that was at least one thing the Saturn had going for it in its early period within the region.

But no PS launch game was based on a domestically popular hit 3D arcade game except Ridge Racer, which one, wasn't as popular, and two, the port was bad. VF1 port was perfect, remix was an additional extra. Also Sony was new.

Fair enough, and in light of watch some documentaries on PC-Engine/Turbographx-16 I'm seeing a lot of similarities between PC-Engine and Saturn in the Japanese region when it comes to commercial performance in their lifecycles on the market.

They weren't far apart in ltd. It's why I find it strange when people act like NEC was more successful than they actually were.

NEC started out with an advantage launching before SNES because in Japan it was the first system to have notably better graphics and animation than the NES/SMS/SG1000/Epoch.

They got several devs including no names of shall we say, mixed quality to try and push software to sell this advantage. But it didn't work for too long. Many people were mixed with the library, Genesis, which did worse there, but still had a higher review batting average than the PCE in the press, and many also kept playing the older consoles.

What helped save NEC for a time was the CD addon. The novelty of well animated games with effects, CD audio, and cutscene anime FMV or slides gave it a major marketable advantage. Though they still had a mixed library, it helped them stay competitive even after SNES came out over there. For around 2 years.

Hmm sounds familiar.

But then SNES took off and creamed it. The base console was limited in power, mixed library, games on both systems sold more on SNES, trying to get more advanced games out of the PC Engine created difficulty for programmers.

It also didn't help NEC released two failed successors in a two year period. The Super Grafx, which had 5 games, then NEC pulled it because......................

And then the Duo, which had its own problems and was poorly marketed. Both plus the CD addon for the original pc engine pissed off japanese retailers, leading to problems for NEC later, who tried getting their real sucessor in stores, the PC-FX.

PC-FX which ended up making last second changes to the hardware and launching early pissing people off, at a US equivalent price point of $400 while the PSX announced the equal of $298USD in japan shortly before the launch.

All this sounds awfully familiar, I can't put my finger on it, lol.

Eh, I still don't think it can be said 3DO did "pretty good" in Japan; even if sales numbers picked up with the price drop, their business model was much different from other systems and manufacturers NEEDED to make money on the hardware sales. The rate in which the price cuts happened plus the amount would suggest those manufacturers weren't making profit on the console sales, and they definitely weren't on software sales, so that doesn't sound like a "pretty good" scenario overall for the system even in the Japanese region
3DO did well for an American console in japan, and was the best selling American console there until the 360.

3DO also never lost money there. Panasonic and Sanyo did, but not 3DO. You have to look at the relationship like Hudson and NEC, Hudson made money on every disc and Hucard, and got a cut of hardware sales which they provided the design and specs for, NEC only lost money. Outside of a few somewhat successful games they published.

A little more time dedicated for Saturn in the region would've garnered more goodwill from Sega players in the region towards Dreamcast
They could have done that by having a good port of VF3 ready and having an RPG at or near DC's launch that consumers there wanted. Dragon Quest and FF weren't the only jrpgs, they could have made deals with other companies, or made their own rpg similar to the ones that were popular. Not Shenmue.

Well that's mostly due to Shenmue's commercial failure in the region and Sega not doing much marketing for the other games there, most likely.
Even the GC versions didn't do to hot, so it just might be the style wasn't appealing to the consumers there. Like Skies of Arcadia for example.

To that end I think Shenmue II would've still worked for the platform if they improved the controls; in terms of game design and structure it actually wasn't that far off from other games of the time and actually had some innovations that other open-world games of the time didn't.

I think Shenmue IIs best chance of working was mass promoting it on the DC in THE US. There are several outdated things in Shenmue 2 that may have gotten a slide because of how improved it was over the first. But Sega decided to only sell the sequel in the regions Shenmue 1 bombed the most. Whether it's Sega being dumb, a SoJ thing toward SoA, or SoJ upset at sazuki for wasting money, who knows. It was undeniably a dumb move that was obvious

There's evidence US version was ready and that's the version the English Euro version got with all the same VAs and game changes.

It likely should've been a PS2 game, but I disagree with it not being too successful if such were the case. Keep in mind SoTC in particular didn't come out until 2005; a Shenmue II that came out on-time (roughly 2002, 2003 latest) wouldn't of been compared to a SoTC that didn't yet exist.

You are talking about a PS2 that had GTA3 and other open action games early, fully exclusive or exclusive for years.

Then more linear action games like DMC etc.

Too crowded and all funded and backed by companies with more money than post death DC Sega. Who would end up with Sammy not long after.

I think Sega's biggest mistake and strangest move after DC's death, was making or producing 50 multiplat games, and then giving each console, Xbox, PS2, GC, and GBA like 30 exclusives individually and 2-3 on the Ngage.

A lot of those were before Sammy too. Not sure what they were thinking.
 
It did decent in Japan like the Saturn, but it just failed in the west
Japan was Dreamcast worst market, US was best.

I don't fully agree with the PS2 statement. PS2 had a bit of a mediocre launch period. But, even the PS2 saw the likes of FFX, GTA3, GT3, MGS2, SH2 pretty much within the first 12 months. Which the PS5 and Series isn't going to match.
Sales wise they will match and beat and without a GTA.

I'm half and half with you on this.

If Sega Japan/USA had worked together -- yes it could have succeeded. In fact, they may have been able to save the extinct arcade scene. Sega could have competed as long as they continued to make software that suited Dreamcast and the Naomi hardware. The later versions of Soul Caliber that came to the PS2 and Xbox were not that far off from what the Dreamcast was capable of.

Nope, US was the strongest market, and the only system moving games were those at launch (Sonic) and mostly Visual Concepts sports titles.

Without getting more system moving third parties or making first party games that drive masses SoA and SoJ working together would mean very little.

Too many changes would have to happen in EU and Japan. But Sega didn't need them, with the US alone they could have survived, if they had more system moving titles. Sadly they didn't.

Sega was still heavily divided between Japan hq and us. While sales were good in us, they were never good in Japan and it was Japan hq that made the call to pull support.
Piracy was a big deal but it hadn’t become serious enough at the time that they pulled support.
Huh? Pulling Dreamcast support was mulled by both sides. They each had people thinking it was time for third party, and then once sales dried up that ended up being the path taken.
 

MikeMyers

Member
UK here. There was quite a lot of hype for Sonic Adventure since the Mega Drive and Sonic were popular here, and that was it.

The real elephant in the room was that the Dreamcast never got a well regarded soccer game, which is baffling bcause Saturn had good soccer games made by EA, Konami and Sega themselves.
 
Japan is a smaller country though. So 2.3 million in Japan is better than 5 million in the US when adjusted for proportion. Also Europe was technically the worst at 1.9 million.
No, Sega shipped just under 2.5 in Japan, they spend years even early on dealing with unsold access stock, and the poor software sales reflect that. Even after 2001 they were still dealing with excess stock. They were the worst market and lost the most money.

Also US was around 6.
 
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AmuroChan

Member
Because that can't be the main reason. If piracy was so attractive on the DC, more people would buy the console....so that they can pirate games on it. That shows that the game catalog was not a good enough draw for people to even want to pirate them.
 
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