Nosebleed

I think it is/was very cool! It had lots of excellent games, the ability to turn it into a MP3 player, it could play VCD's and you could burn games, which of course probably contributed to its demise.

I think part of the reason was the lack of advertising on television. I recall seeing only a few commercials only during the first month of its launch. After that, nothing. PSX, PS2, N64 all have commercials for games even now, years after the systems launch. Maybe if they advertised more it might still be around? Perhaps Crazy Taxi, Tony Hawk 2 or NFL/NBA2K1 commercials would have persueded people into buying one. After all, they're not very expensive compared to the PS2.

How well was it doing (units sold) compared to the PSX when it first came out? Was Sega losing money on the DC? What if Sega did games for other systems as well as the Dreamcast?

Discuss!

Josh H

It did poorly in Japan, and that is why it died. It didn't have enough RPG's, and other games that the Japanese love that aren't as big as here. Skies of Arcadia, and Grandia 2 were great, but they were too little too late over their. I hope the X-box does well, it will be nice to have a successful American system. Then we won't have to worry about the fickle Japanese gamers causing it to fail. The N64 did crappy over there, and great here too. I say screw them, let sony cater to them with rpg's, dating simulations and the other lame games they play, and let an American company make the sports, action, adventure, platform, etc games that are popular here. The cultures are just too different for a company to be forced to be successful in both.

[Edited by joshhinkle on 02-28-01 at 11:34 PM]

KnightLerxst

In my opinion it is not really dead, I still play it, and I will still stop playing it after they stop making games for it.

Nosebleed

I know, I will still continue to play mine long after it's dead, but I meant "dead" by they're not making any more systems or games anymore.

THX 1138

Reason why it failed? Because the f**kers at Sega dont give us sequels to their great classics! Enough with the Sonic games!!!!! Where the hell was Streets of Rage? Golden Axe? Strider? Shinobi? Vectorman? Oh well. I've always been a long time Sega supporter and I always will be.

tha_dvd_man

Er...no, it didn't fail because Sega didn't give us a bunch of old games with better graphis. That does help, and Sega did it enough, but Japanese gamers are just way too fickle and had to wait for the PS2.

darkside

I think Sega trying to sell the console as an all in one multimedia system instead of just a game console hurt them in Japan. Of course the big secret to success in Japan is RPGs and Sega waited to long to get them out. Game sales are way down in Japan anyway with card games being the rage now.

jeffdsmith

[QUOTE]Originally posted by tha_dvd_man
[B]The sad thing I see how many Americans are the same way about giving the GameCube a chance once it hits. Just because we are loyal to one company does not mean everything else blows. I know its been said but I'll say it again. (Just did.)

mmeadows

I've always been a Sega supporter and always will be. Sega's strength has always been innovation. Their games and programming have been above and beyond that of any other. With that said, Sega screwed themselves going back to the Saturn. The difficulty of programming made it tough on developers to get games out as quickly or effectively. It seemed as though the only people who could program a game for it were Sega themselves. If anyone tells me that the PS1 has better games in quality then a Saturn, they are staring me dead in the eye and lying. Sega lost RPG support in Japan by dragging the Saturn just too long, and lost sports gaming support (EA) in America by basically embarrassing them by making a better product (with the exception of NFL). You put those two things together, and you're looking at millions of lost game, and therefore console sales.

That's why the Dreamcast died.

Danimal

My theory is that Sega dropped out on the Dreamcast to keep alive in the software business. I don't think Nintendo and Sony would let Sega make games for their consoles while Sega was still making it's own competing console.

darkside

Segas NFL2k1 is at least the equal of Madden. I feel its better, but its depends on the person. NBA2K1 absolutely kills the mediocre NBA Live. Virtua Tennis is also an amazing game. I don't think EA does tennis. The only thing lacking is getting WSB2K2 up to the level of their other games, but with Visual Concepts now working on it I would expect Sega to have one of the top Baseball games as well. In other words Sega has nothing to be ashamed of with their sports titles. EA is tops in Soccer, Snowboarding, and Hockey right now, buts that about all I would give them.

jeffdsmith

Now that point about making better sports games the EA. This is one of the best reasons I am looking forward to Sega being a system wide publisher. For years EA has attacked Sega and their sports titles. Now we can see what Sega can do without worrying about a console. EA better watch there necks...

cloud

Dreamcast "died" because of three reasons.

1)Poor marketing by Sega
2)Lack of third party support especially WRT big name game titles.
3)The behemoth that is called Sony.

Gallant Pig

I would say piracy played a factor.

mmeadows

That's my point exactly... Sega has been making better sports games for years now, even on the Saturn.

World Series Baseball and Worldwide Soccer, need I say more?

Let's not even get into Powerplay '96, which Sega helped developed.

They simply destroyed EA. In turn, EA out marketed (dollar-wise) the hell out of them.

kahuna

I wonder why piracy never killed the Playstation. Piracy on the Playstation started only a few months after it was released and look how many units that Sony sold.

I beleive it took almost a year before someone finally figured out how to crack the dreamcast games.

Kahuna

[Edited by kahuna on 03-01-01 at 12:31 PM]

Nosebleed

It wasn't that long, but it was a long while after it was released, compared to the PSX. IIRC the DC came out 9/9/99 and the first copied game didn't get released to the internet until June of 2000.

Chris_D

Because Sega is a much smaller company and their position was more fragile (less funds in the bank) then they could much less afford piracy than Sony can. Sega's death is the result of a number of factors though I think.

Here they are starting with the most important:
Sony cool factor, particularly in Japan - people treating their console as a fashion accessory and not a gaming machine.
Marketing - Sega's add campaigns always did seem on the light side, some territories around the world hardly saw a single advertisment for segas machine. Probably a combination of poor planning and lack of funds.
3rd party support - Some companies taking a wait and see approach on the success of a DC with EA in particular almost working towards the DC's demise.
Piracy - A problem on all consoles, even the N64, but Sega as a company could least afford it.

A sad state of affairs, but hey, the games were great.

Chris

RCL66

Because people are stupid!

The mass market bought into Sony's hype machine about the PS2.. How many times did you read in the main stream press about the PS2's ability to download music and play games over the net, it's movie quality graphics power etc.. People bought into the hype and took a wait and see attitude... and when Sega was loosing $50+ on each unit sold, they were not strong enough financially to last through the transition period until all the new systems have been released.

The one very good upside to all this is that Sega games will now live on to a much wider audience.. And if you doubt how big of an event this is, look no further then EA's immediate negative response to the announcement!

tha_dvd_man

LOL! Yeah, I sure feel sorry for EA (wait no I don't). But yes, this is a very good thing for Sega. Sure it's kinda sad that there will be no more "sega systems", but it's their games that are special, and now there will most likely be more of them since they will reach to a much bigger and broader audience, which will allow Sega to make more games. By the way, is it true that Dreamcast games will be playable on Xbox? I've heard a few things about that but never saw it confirmed or anything. If so that would be sweet, both for me (would be able to sell my DC) and for Sega, since their DC games would still sell.

darkside

Someone from Microsoft denied the rumor, but considered they are both based on a Microsoft OS I would imagine it might be possible through an add-on. Maybe a boot disc or something.

cloud

I doubt if that's possible considering the architecture of both systems is totally different.

jeffdsmith

THE REASON piracy hurt Sega and not sony is because there were games worth copying for the dreamcast, there were no good games to compy on psx. ::smirk::

j/k... jeez.

Seriously, Playstation had many more units sold thus being able to push more volume at the time where piracy became a factor for it, where dreamcast games were pretty much copyable about 4 months after it release in the states.

Bust

I don't know if you're going back this far but, 'Tecmo Super Bowl' whooped 'Joe Montana's Football' up and down the field.

tsohg

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