The Dreamcast, what happened?

Sega basically did some dumb marketing mistakes(releasing the system way before the date of Sony's(Applying to both the PSOne for Saturn and the PS2 for DC)is a factor. I did a technology research paper on the marketing of gaming) that lead to it's downfall. The DC, as well as the Saturn, would have been bigger game systems, but it was the marketing that killed them. So now, Sega only make games.Wii_Play_4_Fun

word of advice friend, dont bump threads that are more then a year old,

LOCK this topic!

Some people will say EA killed it. Some people will say PS2 hype killed it. But really, Sega killed it. After the disasters with all the Genesis add ons, the tanking of the Game Gear, and the complete and utter failure of the Saturn, Sega was just about tapped for money by the time the DC was launched. The system and it's software actually sold well, but not well enough to make Sega profitable after years upon years of gross mismanagement. Shenmue, despite it's quality and status as one of my favorite games of all time, also had far too large a budget, and simply did not sell well enough to recoup losses. As much as I liked Shenmue, betting the farm on it was a bad idea. Shame that, it was, and still is, a damn good system.

SEGA set themselves up for it by cancelling the Saturn early and pushing forth hardware that would be severely outdated by the time all 3 competors had entered the scene.

There are of course, many other factors that people will list.

Some people will say EA killed it. Some people will say PS2 hype killed it. But really, Sega killed it. After the disasters with all the Genesis add ons, the tanking of the Game Gear, and the complete and utter failure of the Saturn, Sega was just about tapped for money by the time the DC was launched. The system and it's software actually sold well, but not well enough to make Sega profitable after years upon years of gross mismanagement. Shenmue, despite it's quality and status as one of my favorite games of all time, also had far too large a budget, and simply did not sell well enough to recoup losses. As much as I liked Shenmue, betting the farm on it was a bad idea. Shame that, it was, and still is, a damn good system.

ViewtifulScott

You should know that Saturn was successful to some degree in the Japanese market, despite it's failure in the western market. The Dreamcast was a failure in the Japanese market. So the Dreamcast was a lot closer to the Saturn in terms of success than most realize.

Dreamcast was amazing but as everyone had said the PS2, Xbox, Gamecube all took over the next generation basically. I'm thinking about getting one for dirt cheap :D

Combination of a few things

Lack of a DVD player - Everyone went with the PS2 to get the cheapest DVD player around.

Lies about the PS2 - It wasn't as powerful as it was hyped to be

Came out too early - It was pretty outdated next to everything (aside from the PS2)

Lack of EA support - Biggest 3rd party developer at the time I believe.

Past failures - 32x, CD, Saturn. Nobody trusted Sega because of these things.

Piracy - Pretty much any burned CD worked on it....

Regardless there are a TON of great games for the Dreamcast. Games that are still fun to play today definitely :D I love the system.

[QUOTE="ViewtifulScott"]

Some people will say EA killed it. Some people will say PS2 hype killed it. But really, Sega killed it. After the disasters with all the Genesis add ons, the tanking of the Game Gear, and the complete and utter failure of the Saturn, Sega was just about tapped for money by the time the DC was launched. The system and it's software actually sold well, but not well enough to make Sega profitable after years upon years of gross mismanagement. Shenmue, despite it's quality and status as one of my favorite games of all time, also had far too large a budget, and simply did not sell well enough to recoup losses. As much as I liked Shenmue, betting the farm on it was a bad idea. Shame that, it was, and still is, a damn good system.

hakanakumono

You should know that Saturn was successful to some degree in the Japanese market, despite it's failure in the western market. The Dreamcast was a failure in the Japanese market. So the Dreamcast was a lot closer to the Saturn in terms of success than most realize.

the dreamcast was indeed an excellent system that deserved more success but a few things stopped it from reaching its commecial potential

1)Sega themselves were a worn out company, they lost so much money during the Saturn era, that they simply didnt have enough money and resources to compete with Sony, Nintendo and the then newcomer Microsoft, rather then lose more money, they stopped console production

2)the PS2 was arriving and everyone knew it, it was a DVD player, it was backwards compatibleand developers were promising lots of games for it, after what happened with the Sega Saturn(sega stopped supporting it 3 years after it was launched, angering consumers and developers), most people stopped trusting sega

3)the PS1 was still a massive entity in gaming, the dreamcast was launched in 1998 in Japan and 1999 everywhere else, the PS1 was still very much in its prime, games like Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy 8, Tekken 3, Grandiaand many others were released forit at that time, the dreamcast,or any other system just couldnt compete witha library of games like that.