What really happened with the Dreamcast?

My theories are:

1.) Rampant piracy.
2.) Microsoft conspiracy. Microsoft's windows CE was used on many DC games. Microsoft had a conflict of interest with the DC using this because the Xbox was set to release close to the end of DCs life. I think Microsoft forced their hand. Windows CE wasn't used on JP games (to my knowledge), just US games. The DC continued to be produced and new games came out in Japan, but the DC was axed suddenly around 2001, in the U.S. when the Xbox came out. Wasn't the DC doing well when it was axed in the U.S.?

Call me a tinfoil hat wearing weirdo, but that's how I see it.
 
[quote name='2DMention']My theories are:

1.) Rampant piracy.
2.) Microsoft conspiracy. Microsoft's windows CE was used on many DC games. Microsoft had a conflict of interest with the DC using this because the Xbox was set to release close to the end of DCs life. I think Microsoft forced their hand. Windows CE wasn't used on JP games (to my knowledge), just US games. The DC continued to be produced and new games came out in Japan, but the DC was axed suddenly around 2001, in the U.S. when the Xbox came out. Wasn't the DC doing well when it was axed in the U.S.?

Call me a tinfoil hat wearing weirdo, but that's how I see it.[/QUOTE]

No, I believe ignorant idiot would be more appropriate.

Microsoft had nothing to gain from the demise of the Dreamcast, especially when the use of DirectX via WinCE was something they promoted. You misunderstand the division. It wasn't so much about nationality as what the primary platform for the developer was at the time. US and European publishers are far more interested in supporting the PC than Japanese publishers due to the differences in the native markets. If you had an existing PC game done with DirectX, the cost of porting to the Dreamcast was hugely reduced by the availability of the WinCE option. If you had a game that might get PC and Dreamcast versions if the costs could be kept low, then the WinCE option was a big help in being able to justify supporting those platforms.

Thus WinCE was a big help for the Dreamcast when it came to publishers who were already supporting the PC.

Microsoft didn't force anybody's hand. What could they have done if they wanted to? It isn't as though they were going to dump support for the Hitachi processors. A major portion of the WinCE device market was using those chips. The Dreamcast was in a death spiral long before the Xbox was even close to launching. Recall that the Xbox appear a full year after the PS2, one of the major hurdles the Dreamcast couldn't overcome. The Dreamcast debacle had lessons to teach Microsoft but the story was largely over before they went to market.
 
As much as I hate to invoke the cliche, the collapse of Sega as a hardware platform company was a case of the perfect storm.

Myriad reasons have been listed above. You can winnow it down to a top five challenges for Sega. (Favoring any one of those problems acts as a kind of personality test.) Any single one of those problems could be beaten. A really well led and organized company could possibly have beat any two of those problems. But against all five? Nope, nothing but spilled blood on the spreadsheets.
 
Im pretty sure all the problems with Sega happend way before the Dreamcast was ever produced.

I say this because, what if Tom Kalinske was still head of Sega of America during the Saturn and Dreamcast days, and if Hayao Nakayama wasnt in charge of Sega of Japan or his desision of letting Kalinske go never hit his skull, Sega would be in the market today.

http://www.sega-16.com/feature_page.php?id=245&title=Tom Kalinske: American Samurai

If your done reading this, your probably thinking how Kalinske is pretty sweet guy and made Sega the powerhouse bomb during the early 90's. If Kalinske was still around by the time during the Saturn life time and well heck, during the Dreamcast, Sega would still be the house hold name like Nintendo is today. Sure, the Dreamcast would have a tough time competeing with Microsoft and Sony along with Nintendo, but with the right people, it would be on top or near it.

Sega made alot of stupid mistakes in the past, killing off the Genesis to early to rush the highly failed 32x, then to rush the Saturn, only to have a SoA president Bernie Stolar at the time wanting to kill off the Saturn to make way for the Dreamcast immedietly when sales were down. The Saturn had much potential, but like Sega, they did very stupid stuff. Cancelling the only Sonic game for that system Sonic Xtreame and having a president who wanted nothing to do with RPG games and had bitterness against Working Designs, who has made alot of jems for that system, it wasnt a pretty picutre.

After watching the video that TheReaper01 posted, it seems Stolar was really trying to get Sega back on track. Even though alot of Sega fans disagreed with what he did with the Saturn, if the system wasnt selling like it should, then what else can you do with it.

According to the vid, Sony really did give Sega a blow by launching the Playstation 2, and making it compatible with DVD, something im sure if Sega knew about earlier, they would add that to the Dreamcast. But if you did that, Sony would definetly know of Sega espianoge and take Sega to court, so its something Sega didnt need.

So, the Dreamcast exsist it seems for Sony and Microsoft to make a stepstone onto their success.

Its kinda funny, the Dreamcast failure seems to outline what Sega is today...
 
It definitely wasn't due to price, it was released at $199 if I remember correctly. I got it at release for that much. It actually did pretty well for a year. But yeah people were expecting a lot from PS2. Both because the DVD drive was a big deal (unlike Blu Ray is this generation) and because of the graphics. Tbh though the PS2 didn't deliver on graphics until a year after it was released. Up until that time the Dreamcast was graphically the superior system despite its weaker hardware, and had it stayed alive I think it could've gone a lot further. It's similar to the way the 360 has much weaker hardware than the PS3 but has such a better development architecture that the 360 generally ends up smoking the PS3.

As for piracy, I never pirated a game for the system until it was dead and I couldn't find games. After the DC died the homebrew and modding scene really kept the DC alive for a long time. As for game quality it certainly wasn't that because no console in history has yet met the signal to noise ratio of the Dreamcast and probably never will (though no EA probably helped in that regard hugely). The controller I honestly loved, it was great for most games. However the d-pad was horrendous and it was a huge detriment for fighting games (not something I ever played besides Virtual On: Oration Tangram and Soul Calibur), and that should've been Sega's bread and butter given their arcade history. The VMUs were terribly annoying though (too small, ran out of batteries too fast, never really used very well). The online gaming was fantastic imo, I still have the broadband adapter and had the kb & mouse (which was REALLY unfair against controller players for Unreal and Quake). I honestly don't know why they made it so difficult to get a broadband adapter, I mean ethernet cards were going for $10 even back then.
 
The PS2 brought the DVD format to the mainstream, as I would guess Sony hopes for the PS3 and BlueRay. THe Deramcast didn't play DVD, didn't have EA support, had some launch issues with the disks, and unfortunately followed the Sega CD, 32X and Saturn, which certainly could have some away.

I cannot imagine it was piracy that brought it down but no Madden certainly had an effect.
 
Basically Sega Japan didn't support the system, while Sega U.S. did. Many in Japan were pissed off about another Sega console being released, as the Sega Saturn was still doing well at the time.

And as mentioned before, companies like EA not supporting it didn't help. Sega and their sister software companies provided something like 85% of the Dreamcast software that was published. Proof that 3rd party support can make or break a console
 
[quote name='ZeonikFreak']
According to the vid, Sony really did give Sega a blow by launching the Playstation 2, and making it compatible with DVD, something im sure if Sega knew about earlier, they would add that to the Dreamcast. But if you did that, Sony would definetly know of Sega espianoge and take Sega to court, so its something Sega didnt need.
[/quote]

Court? Never would have happened and wouldn't be a winner. The DVD was in full swing when PS2 came out w/ a system that could play the DVD. It's not like they invented the DVD player.

Plus I don't think EA not backing them was a major thing. Many people still rate 2K sports games as some of the best. Heck NFL 2k5 was probably the best NFL game untill Madden 09 and I still see things 09 could take from 2k5 to make it better. Obviously with 2k sports games being released for 19.99 they would have almost killed the Madden series eventually. And if Dreamcast had still been around for 2k5 I could see Dreamcast slowly gaining ground on Sony because they had great RPGs and their sports games would have made Sonys inferior if you ask me.
 
[quote name='screwkick']Basically Sega Japan didn't support the system, while Sega U.S. did. Many in Japan were pissed off about another Sega console being released, as the Sega Saturn was still doing well at the time.

And as mentioned before, companies like EA not supporting it didn't help. Sega and their sister software companies provided something like 85% of the Dreamcast software that was published. Proof that 3rd party support can make or break a console[/QUOTE]

Ok first off on Sega Of Japan not supporting the system I think the d-points bank the Japanese got was pretty sweet and woefully absent here.
Now onto other things.
I think the biggest problems in terms of the DC, one of which most people seem to forget, is marketing. Sega is completely fucking incompetant when it comes to marketing their games, at least here.
Now the money thing is a definite factor but part of that is Sega jumping the gun and price dropping the DC from $199 to $150 so soon. The DC was selling well enough at the time and it wasn't necessary.
One big thing to note about the DC, it has the last games Amano designed characters for, see El Dorado's Gate. No more. It's too bad it never got to the 14th installment of the bi-monthly RPG being planned.
 
Really, it was just an inferior machine to the PS2 because it didn't play DVD's. THe PS2 brought DVD's into the mainstream. For many people, it was their first DVD player, same with the PS3, first BlueRay. Also, no Madden, no EASports, that hurt. You could say, how come the 360 hasn't failed if it was the "inferior machine"...well, it does play DVDs, has Netflix streaming, lots of killer apps, and of course Live, so all of that certainly makes up for the lack of a BluRay player.
 
I still own a Dreamcast, and some games are definitely worth getting for. Both Sega and the media killed the console, but the loyal fans are still using their Dreamcasts up to now.
 
ok the dreamcasts BIG flaw was that it was waaaaaaaaay to easy to pirate games.
you actually still can, all u have to do is find it online and burn to a cd, no moding needed, because of this so many ppl were not buying the games and just stealing them, that sega was not making enough game sales to keep going.....i believe, correct me if i am wrong
 
The PS2, while a part of it, is very small comparatively. The DC was already selling for $100 less and Sega really jumped the gun on price dropping it.
I also don't think generalizing by just saying Sega's fault is quite fair enough. I think the marketing really needs to shoulder a LOT of blame which no one is willing to do.
Heck even while one of Sega of Japan's ads for Sonic was goofy as fuck and I think this may have included the DC version but don't quote me on that. It's a guy blazing past a woman in a skirt and you seem em' leaving them in the dust. I think it's Sonic Advance now that I think of it. Anyway it got that sensation of speed in the live action bit as well as showing gameplay footage. THAT ad, while not the greatest, is better than most of the way Sega advertised for the DC here.
 
"Basically Sega Japan didn't support the system, while Sega U.S. did. Many in Japan were pissed off about another Sega console being released, as the Sega Saturn was still doing well at the time."

The dreamcast wasn't successful in Japan, but it wasn't for a lack of support. Look at all the good games that are the system and you'll notice most came from Japan - Skies of Arcadia, PSO, Sonic Adventure, Samba, Chu Chu, Jet Set Radio, Space Channel, Crazy Taxi, virtua on. Then look at the best third party games - Resident Evil CV, Soul Calibur, DOA2, Grandia 2, the countless capcom fighting games (sf3, SF2T, MVC2, powerstone 2), and shooters (mars matrix, ikaruga, gunbirds). All of the hot shit was coming from japan, so to claim lack of support is ridiculous.
 
hmm Powerstone 2...still miss that great game or MvsC2 another great game only playable on the DC. Shenmue II...still not the same on the xbox
 
In the end I love my dreamcast still and honestly it was the first and only sega console I purchased. Whenever I get my game room set up, best believe that I will have my dreamcast hooked up and playing Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Power Stone, Jet Grind Radio, and Shenmue.

my killing points
-lack of third party support killed dreamcast
-First party games were either hate it or love it
-no DVD player
-overall direction of the system was so focused that it didn't appeal to the casual gamer in general

Though these points have already been discussed I see these as my particualr reasons I can argue out with everybody.

Though not on point of the discussion, I have always seen the Xbox as the spiritual successor of the Dreamcast.
 
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