6 ms·

> The Dreamcast had so much potential, a year's head start over the PS2, a decent selection of launch titles, and online games, but I guess the damage was alrea

by orbitur 10y ago

> The Dreamcast had so much potential, a year's head start over the PS2, a decent selection of launch titles, and online games, but I guess the damage was already done The damage was done with third party developers. I think the public was ready for the Dreamcast/PS2 showdown, but the Dreamcast barely had games that anyone cared about. Nintendo had clearly dropped the ball with the "hardcore" (for lack of a better term) game audience by this point, so the real battle was supposed to be between Sega and Sony. I can't remember if the story was that Sony had effectively bought everyone's loyalty, or if the devs had decided they hated Sega.

vlunkr 10y ago
Part of the job in creating a console is to appeal to 3rd party devs though, you can't put the blame on them. It's likely that since the ps1 had a huge user base it was just a safe bet to develop for the ps2 over the Dreamcast. And I guess you can argue that Nintendo had dropped the ball at this point, but Sega hadn't done anything good since the Genesis, as OP pointed out, that includes Sega CD, 32x, Game Gear and Saturn.
bobajeff 10y ago
No. I loved the games Dreamcast had, as did many other folks. Unfortunately, the Dreamcast didn't stand a chance because of Sega's crippling debt. Only a phenomenon on the level of Super Mario Bros., Tetris (gameboy), Pokemon, World of Warcraft, Wii Sports or Minecraft could've kept them from closing down production.
- forgetsusername 10y ago
  >as did many other folks. Sales say otherwise, with only 9MM units sold. The PS1 sold over 100MM.
  - ZenoArrow 10y ago
    9 million is still a lot of people, regardless of how you want to downplay it.
  - bobajeff 10y ago
    The context for that number is Dreamcast being discontinued after roughly one year in the US.
astrodust 10y ago
It wasn't that the Dreamcast wasn't any good, but that Sega got blindsided by Sony's back room dealing. Sony wanted in and they were willing to throw small mountains of cash around to make it happen. When faced with a choice between a company taking your loyalty for granted and one willing to pay for the privilege, it's not surprising how many jumped. The same thing played out later with the introduction of the Xbox where Microsoft muscled, bullied, and bought companies to make their platform happen.
- dhimes 10y ago
  Dreamcast was spectacular. I bought it for my young children and I was stunned by how beautiful the graphics were and how smooth the games were. Sonic the Hedgehog was the main one that (I think) I remember.
  - astrodust 10y ago
    It really was an amazing console. The Saturn was also the best-in-class when it came out, the 2D performance absolutely crushed anything else on the market, but Sony's push for 3D made that irrelevant and the Saturn's 3D capabilities were weak, even weaker than the fairly feeble PlayStation. The Dreamcast showed how Sega took 3D seriously and it was an amazing console, easily competitive with the PS2 and Xbox. The only problem was Sega'd lost their de-facto leadership position and were scrambling to stay relevant. It's interesting, however, that I've met several people who had their first internet experience on the Dreamcast because it had several modules that made that possible.
ZenoArrow 10y ago
> "the Dreamcast barely had games that anyone cared about" I'm guessing you didn't play one. The Dreamcast had an amazing game library, especially considering the short time it was actively supported. Admittedly 3rd party support was thin on the ground, but the games that did make it to that system were some of the best of that generation IMO. > "I can't remember if the story was that Sony had effectively bought everyone's loyalty, or if the devs had decided they hated Sega." My understanding was that 3rd party devs had been burned three times in a row by Sega on products that were poorly supported by Sega (MegaCD, 32X, Saturn). There was also the piracy problem on the Dreamcast, and the fact that the PS2 was a DVD player as well as a games console. If the Dreamcast had used a DVD drive instead of the GD-ROM option they went with I could see it easily adding another 2 years onto the Dreamcast's life. The silver lining is that the piracy issues also helped the Dreamcast be one of the best supported homebrew gaming platforms.
- Grazester 10y ago
  The Dreamcast was well thought out(unlike the Saturn) and incredibly easy to develop for(Sega learnt at least in this regard) which lead to such an embrace from the homebrew scene. I remember one development house saying something along the lines of, Developing for the PS2 is like writing a sentence with a paint bush while for the Dreamcast it was like using a fine point pen.
- amyjess 10y ago
  > I'm guessing you didn't play one. The Dreamcast had an amazing game library, especially considering the short time it was actively supported. Admittedly 3rd party support was thin on the ground, but the games that did make it to that system were some of the best of that generation IMO. The Dreamcast had an amazing game library, true, but it almost entirely consisted of niche games that the general public didn't care about. The Sonic Adventure games were the only ones with mainstream appeal. The market then was different from the market now. Nowadays, Steam is full of awesome quirky niche indie games that are successful, and if a console launched now with that kind of library, it would probably be successful, but back then if you didn't have AAA games with name recognition, you were dead in the water. You'd only recognize how awesome the Dreamcast's library was if you were interested in taking huge gambles on stuff you've never heard of before.
wmil 10y ago
Piracy was a huge problem on the Dreamcast. The bios devs accidentally left some code in from the developer consoles that would allow home consoles to run games from standard CD-Rs. Developers didn't want to invest in a system that had effectively no copy protection.
- Grazester 10y ago
  You are wrong about this. Developer were skeptical to commit to the Dreamcast right out the gate(before even the console's launch). EA saying later on it would never support the console(it seemed like there was even bad blood between EA and Sega). Developers didnt want to commit large amounts of resources to development into another Sega console. Simply put they were burnt by the Saturn and Sega didnt have the resources to throw money at them.
  - ZenoArrow 10y ago
    No, wmil is not wrong about piracy on the Dreamcast. It clearly was a contributing factor for developers not supporting the Dreamcast, it just wasn't the only reason.
    - Grazester 10y ago
      It might seem like this but you really don't seem to have an idea of the state Sega was in and their poor relationship with developers.
      - ZenoArrow 10y ago
        I'm as aware of that as any other armchair expert.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
    - simondedalus 10y ago
JohnBooty 10y ago
> The damage was done with third party developers. I > think the public was ready for the Dreamcast/PS2 > showdown I strongly believe that the Dreamcast would have competed quite well against the PS2 if only they'd been able to get EA on board. The Madden football franchise sells systems and it was even more true in those days before the game market grew and diversified. Sports games like Madden and the NBA games were huge killer apps for a very large segment of the audience. Probably even moreso than they are today; entire genres of games (MMO, FPS, etc) had yet to make a meaningful impact on consoles back in 1999. Ironically, Sega's own NFL2K on the Dreamcast actually was amazing - way better than any Madden game released up to that point. And it sold pretty well, too! And the Dreamcast's 4 controller ports meant that you didn't need an adapter for 4-player action. But it wasn't enough. Name recognition matters. Entire legions of 18-24 year olds passed up the Dreamcast because they waited for the PS2 and the EA Sports franchises that would never appear on the Dreamcast thanks to EA's experience with the whole Saturn fiasco. > but the Dreamcast barely had games that > anyone cared about. Yeah. I mean, they did, but it was a lot of niche stuff like fighting games and offbeat quirky titles like Jet Set Radio that appealed more to geeky/hardcore gamers and not Joe Sixpack.
- hood_syntax 10y ago
  > niche stuff Anyone remember Ready to Rumble boxing? That game was so much fun...

by orbitur 10y ago

vlunkr 10y ago

Part of the job in creating a console is to appeal to 3rd party devs though, you can't put the blame on them. It's likely that since the ps1 had a huge user base it was just a safe bet to develop for the ps2 over the Dreamcast. And I guess you can argue that Nintendo had dropped the ball at this point, but Sega hadn't done anything good since the Genesis, as OP pointed out, that includes Sega CD, 32x, Game Gear and Saturn.

bobajeff 10y ago

No. I loved the games Dreamcast had, as did many other folks. Unfortunately, the Dreamcast didn't stand a chance because of Sega's crippling debt. Only a phenomenon on the level of Super Mario Bros., Tetris (gameboy), Pokemon, World of Warcraft, Wii Sports or Minecraft could've kept them from closing down production.

forgetsusername 10y ago
>as did many other folks. Sales say otherwise, with only 9MM units sold. The PS1 sold over 100MM.
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  9 million is still a lot of people, regardless of how you want to downplay it.
- bobajeff 10y ago
  The context for that number is Dreamcast being discontinued after roughly one year in the US.

astrodust 10y ago

It wasn't that the Dreamcast wasn't any good, but that Sega got blindsided by Sony's back room dealing. Sony wanted in and they were willing to throw small mountains of cash around to make it happen. When faced with a choice between a company taking your loyalty for granted and one willing to pay for the privilege, it's not surprising how many jumped. The same thing played out later with the introduction of the Xbox where Microsoft muscled, bullied, and bought companies to make their platform happen.

dhimes 10y ago
Dreamcast was spectacular. I bought it for my young children and I was stunned by how beautiful the graphics were and how smooth the games were. Sonic the Hedgehog was the main one that (I think) I remember.
- astrodust 10y ago
  It really was an amazing console. The Saturn was also the best-in-class when it came out, the 2D performance absolutely crushed anything else on the market, but Sony's push for 3D made that irrelevant and the Saturn's 3D capabilities were weak, even weaker than the fairly feeble PlayStation. The Dreamcast showed how Sega took 3D seriously and it was an amazing console, easily competitive with the PS2 and Xbox. The only problem was Sega'd lost their de-facto leadership position and were scrambling to stay relevant. It's interesting, however, that I've met several people who had their first internet experience on the Dreamcast because it had several modules that made that possible.

ZenoArrow 10y ago

> "the Dreamcast barely had games that anyone cared about" I'm guessing you didn't play one. The Dreamcast had an amazing game library, especially considering the short time it was actively supported. Admittedly 3rd party support was thin on the ground, but the games that did make it to that system were some of the best of that generation IMO. > "I can't remember if the story was that Sony had effectively bought everyone's loyalty, or if the devs had decided they hated Sega." My understanding was that 3rd party devs had been burned three times in a row by Sega on products that were poorly supported by Sega (MegaCD, 32X, Saturn). There was also the piracy problem on the Dreamcast, and the fact that the PS2 was a DVD player as well as a games console. If the Dreamcast had used a DVD drive instead of the GD-ROM option they went with I could see it easily adding another 2 years onto the Dreamcast's life. The silver lining is that the piracy issues also helped the Dreamcast be one of the best supported homebrew gaming platforms.

Grazester 10y ago
The Dreamcast was well thought out(unlike the Saturn) and incredibly easy to develop for(Sega learnt at least in this regard) which lead to such an embrace from the homebrew scene. I remember one development house saying something along the lines of, Developing for the PS2 is like writing a sentence with a paint bush while for the Dreamcast it was like using a fine point pen.
amyjess 10y ago
> I'm guessing you didn't play one. The Dreamcast had an amazing game library, especially considering the short time it was actively supported. Admittedly 3rd party support was thin on the ground, but the games that did make it to that system were some of the best of that generation IMO. The Dreamcast had an amazing game library, true, but it almost entirely consisted of niche games that the general public didn't care about. The Sonic Adventure games were the only ones with mainstream appeal. The market then was different from the market now. Nowadays, Steam is full of awesome quirky niche indie games that are successful, and if a console launched now with that kind of library, it would probably be successful, but back then if you didn't have AAA games with name recognition, you were dead in the water. You'd only recognize how awesome the Dreamcast's library was if you were interested in taking huge gambles on stuff you've never heard of before.

wmil 10y ago

Piracy was a huge problem on the Dreamcast. The bios devs accidentally left some code in from the developer consoles that would allow home consoles to run games from standard CD-Rs. Developers didn't want to invest in a system that had effectively no copy protection.

Grazester 10y ago
You are wrong about this. Developer were skeptical to commit to the Dreamcast right out the gate(before even the console's launch). EA saying later on it would never support the console(it seemed like there was even bad blood between EA and Sega). Developers didnt want to commit large amounts of resources to development into another Sega console. Simply put they were burnt by the Saturn and Sega didnt have the resources to throw money at them.
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  No, wmil is not wrong about piracy on the Dreamcast. It clearly was a contributing factor for developers not supporting the Dreamcast, it just wasn't the only reason.
  - Grazester 10y ago
    It might seem like this but you really don't seem to have an idea of the state Sega was in and their poor relationship with developers.
    - ZenoArrow 10y ago
      I'm as aware of that as any other armchair expert.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
  - simondedalus 10y ago

JohnBooty 10y ago

> The damage was done with third party developers. I > think the public was ready for the Dreamcast/PS2 > showdown I strongly believe that the Dreamcast would have competed quite well against the PS2 if only they'd been able to get EA on board. The Madden football franchise sells systems and it was even more true in those days before the game market grew and diversified. Sports games like Madden and the NBA games were huge killer apps for a very large segment of the audience. Probably even moreso than they are today; entire genres of games (MMO, FPS, etc) had yet to make a meaningful impact on consoles back in 1999. Ironically, Sega's own NFL2K on the Dreamcast actually was amazing - way better than any Madden game released up to that point. And it sold pretty well, too! And the Dreamcast's 4 controller ports meant that you didn't need an adapter for 4-player action. But it wasn't enough. Name recognition matters. Entire legions of 18-24 year olds passed up the Dreamcast because they waited for the PS2 and the EA Sports franchises that would never appear on the Dreamcast thanks to EA's experience with the whole Saturn fiasco. > but the Dreamcast barely had games that > anyone cared about. Yeah. I mean, they did, but it was a lot of niche stuff like fighting games and offbeat quirky titles like Jet Set Radio that appealed more to geeky/hardcore gamers and not Joe Sixpack.

hood_syntax 10y ago
> niche stuff Anyone remember Ready to Rumble boxing? That game was so much fun...