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There are two points to note. The first is piracy probably didn’t lead to the failure of the Dreamcast. They didn’t sell many of the consoles... if it was a pi
by new299 8y ago
There are two points to note.
The first is piracy probably didn’t lead to the failure of the Dreamcast. They didn’t sell many of the consoles... if it was a piracy issue then you’d expect they’d sell many consoles, but few games (the line up of games was really good).
The article mentions Ikaruga a lot. It worth noting that Ikaruga for the Dreamcast was released a year after the Dreamcast was cancelled. They probably weren’t hugely concerned about piracy at this point.
From memory it was an easy port for them, because the arcade board that Ikaruga ran on is also the same as the Dreamcast.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y agoIn the UK at least it was more than likely due to Sony's far superior marketing of the original PlayStation. The arrival of the PS2 and the Xbox sealed the deal. That said, I've always seen the original Xbox as the spiritual successor to the Dreamcast.
- wolfgke 8y ago> That said, I've always seen the original Xbox as the spiritual successor to the Dreamcast. In what sense? The architecture between these two consoles is IMHO quite different.
- atVelocet 8y agoBut it really was. Sega and Microsoft worked closely together or why do you think they implented the Windows CE option? Also all Sega arcades afterwards shipped with Xbox hardware.
- tangue 8y agoWindows CE was loaded from the disks and was an option for developers. The dreamcast had another os which were more close to the naomi arcade machine
- naraic0o 8y agoThe article claims that the hardware contained no "OS" and that all discs were self-contained full-linked OSes.
- tangue 8y agoThere was a rudimentary os when you boot without gd-rom. It allowed you to set settings, manage memory cards etc I suspect it was loaded just in case where there were no os on the gdrom inserted otherwise the system will boot on the gdrom os. Edit : video link https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5L9p_Bq_hFk https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5L9p_Bq_hFk
- wolfgke 8y agoWindows CE was ported to a lot of processor architectures at that time. Its architecture is quite different from the Windows NT line. To quote Wikipedia on this > https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Windows_Embedded_Compact&oldid=866695453 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Windows_Embedded_... "Unlike Windows Embedded Standard, which is based on Windows NT, Windows Embedded Compact uses a different hybrid kernel." I am also pretty sure that Windows CE's architecture is quite different from the OS running on the XBox, but cannot give a quotable source on this. At least for the Xbox 360 and XBox One, I am pretty sure that I have read that their kernel is actually not so dissimilar from the kernel used in the NT line. The difference between the Windows NT line and the XBox 360/One OS rather lies in the software running above the kernel.
- monocasa 8y agoYou can quote me, as I've gotten down and dirty with the Xbox ( https://github.com/monocasa/xbvm https://github.com/monocasa/xbvm ), and have written board support packages for CE for work. The OG Xbox kernel is an extremely heavily stripped down and modified Win2k kernel. No support for user mode, multiple address spaces, or more than one running process. No win32 in the kernel. USB, sound, and the vast majority of the graphics driver are statically linked into the process executable.
- pmarin 8y agoSega started porting many of their new arcade games to the Xbox. Consequently former Dreamcast users who wanted to play the new arcade games at home bought the Xbox.
- DCKing 8y agoA Sega exec tried to push Microsoft to make the Xbox backwards compatible with the Dreamcast even [1], which Microsoft refused mostly because they didn't want to support online infrastructure for titles that used it. The original Xbox seemed to have been considered to be the favored successor to the Dreamcast by Sega at least at one point. Then again, Sega's main initial portwork was focused on the GameCube. The Dreamcast games Sonic Adventure 2, Ikaruga, Crazy Taxi, Phantasy Star Online and Skies of Arcadia were ported to the GameCube and not to the Xbox. They also brought originally-for-Dreamcast titles Super Monkey Ball, Beach Spikers and Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg to the GameCube exclusively. [1]: https://kotaku.com/how-xbox-could-have-helped-the-dreamcast-survive-30936219 https://kotaku.com/how-xbox-could-have-helped-the-dreamcast-...
- oarsinsync 8y ago> They also brought originally-for-Dreamcast titles Super Monkey Ball ... to the GameCube exclusively Super Monkey Ball was on the Xbox too. I was very happy when I discovered that, and even more so when it was playable on the X360.
- amyjess 8y agoTake a close look at the controllers. The similarities are eerie.
- ThrowawayB7 8y ago> I've always seen the original Xbox as the spiritual successor to the Dreamcast. That's a rather persistent myth. The project that became the Xbox originated from an entirely different division within MS. The team in the Windows CE group that worked on the Dreamcast SDK actually had their own separate proposal for a non-x86 based console but MS chose to move forward with the Xbox proposal instead. IIRC, very, very few of the people on the Dreamcast SDK team moved over to Xbox when they were disbanded.
- jerf 8y ago"The first is piracy probably didn’t lead to the failure of the Dreamcast. They didn’t sell many of the consoles... if it was a piracy issue then you’d expect they’d sell many consoles, but few games (the line up of games was really good)." If memory serves me... and it doesn't always terribly well, but still... I think you can make the even stronger argument that by the time the piracy was widespread and convenient, the console had already visibly failed. It took a while to get to the point where you could torrent an arbitrary game, burn it, and play it. You can tell that a console is going to fail to another before the last game is shipped. The PS2 was clearly going to crush the Dreamcast before it had literally passed it in numbers. I don't think the Dreamcast's fate would have materially changed if it was pirate-proof.
- lukeschlather 8y ago> It took a while to get to the point where you could torrent an arbitrary game Especially so, given that the BitTorrent protocol hadn't even been designed when the Dreamcast was officially discontinued.
- notyourwork 8y agoBitTorrent wasn’t how pirated material was distributed in those days. DCC over Irc and FTP were widely used at this time.
- freeflight 8y agoOr simply uploading to some free webspace hoster by breaking the iso up into many smaller rar/zip achieves.
- jandrese 8y agoWasn't it LimeWire/Kazaa? My early P2P history is a little fuzzy. The big issue is that so many people were still on modems back then that downloading a DC game wasn't easy. Plus public WiFi wasn't really a thing yet. It was the kids on college campuses who were connected to brand new and shiny Ethernet networks that really went nuts.
- at-fates-hands 8y ago> The first is piracy probably didn’t lead to the failure of the Dreamcast. I had a large group of friends who got the Dreamcast right when it came out. I still remember many of the commercials touting the AI of the console and the end of their commercials showing the light on the op of the console glowing with the voice over "it's thinking". Everybody in our group wanted it because the Dreamcast touted the ability of the machine to think and gone were the days on NFL games were you could run one play over and over and the game would just let you. Here was a console who advertised this wasn't going to happen, that it was actively learning. Huge disappointment when we all realized we had been had by a marketing campaign that touted a functionality the games and console could never have. After the first month and realizing all the AI claims were totally bogus, my whole group of friends didn't buy another game. Once the PS2 came out, that was it for Dreamcast. The interesting thing is I've seen a ton of articles about the history of the Dreamcast lately and none of them mention this very large marketing campaign of essentially lying about the capabilities of the console.
- bitwize 8y agoSony did the same BS with the PS2, whose MIPS core was called the "Emotion Engine" because it was touted as being powerful enough to allow the console to feel, or at least simulate, emotions. The turn of the millennium was a weird time for gaming.
- bliblah 8y ago>The first is piracy probably didn’t lead to the failure of the Dreamcast. They didn’t sell many of the consoles The dreamcast was forward thinking in many ways (Built in Modem, MMO console games, 3D graphics that could rival arcades) but the lack of a real system selling game was very noticeable. > if it was a piracy issue then you’d expect they’d sell many consoles, but few games This is very true, every time I go to south america I still see street vendors selling PS2 bootleg games!
- crankylinuxuser 8y agoI helped my sister find DC downloadable games. And unfortunately, 95% of all the games available were 1-on-1 fighting games. The few others were simulators (Crazy Taxi, flying games). The only RPG I can think of was Phantasy Star Online. It was down for at least a decade when we downloaded games. I look at PlayStation, and it was RPGs galore. And while there was shovelware, there were all sorts of games from every genre.
- ThrowawayB7 8y agoGrandia II? Skies of Arcadia? Shenmue? There were a number of good RPGs for the Dreamcast.
- andrewmackrodt 8y agoIf you're interested in picking up some DC RPGs today for nostalgia I would recommend Skies of Arcadia and Grandia 2, the latter did some to PS2 though.
- notafraudster 8y ago> The first is piracy probably didn’t lead to the failure of the Dreamcast. They didn’t sell many of the consoles... if it was a piracy issue then you’d expect they’d sell many consoles, but few games (the line up of games was really good). This is correct. In the gaming space this is called "attach rate". Consoles tend to have higher attach rates than handhelds (because, for instance, multiple children in a family own a handheld but share software, while a console is typically one-per-family). Attach rates generally go up over time because the geometric mean of owner-weeks generally goes up over time -- there are some exceptions when hardware sales take off as a rocket like in the first 2-3 years of the Nintendo Wii. When Dreamcast software stopped in the US around 2003, it had an attach rate of about 4 according to NPD figures, which is fairly standard for a console that had been around for 2 years. That's not to say there wasn't widespread piracy or whatever, it just means that as you note we don't see an obvious absence of software sales where there ought be software sales.
- freeflight 8y ago> The first is piracy probably didn’t lead to the failure of the Dreamcast. Indeed, if that'd be really the case then Sony's PSX should have failed 10 times over because it was the original "piracy console" due to the use of CD-Rom vs cartridges. Sure, the burners and blanks used to be expensive in the beginning, but it didn't take long for prices to fall. Also didn't help that the PSX was region locked, so many people chipped their consoles to be able to play releases from other regions, which then also allowed the console to play pirated/burned PSX games. During my childhood, growing up in the 90s in Germany, I don't remember anybody owning a PSX that was not chipped, some would literally make a business out of selling burned PSX games on the schoolyard, bringing binders full of games and printed lists with all of their "offerings".
- elsonrodriguez 8y ago> The first is piracy probably didn’t lead to the failure of the Dreamcast. Sega led to the failure of the Dreamcast. They had failed fans with the SegaCD. Released the 32X as a "bridge" between the 16bit and 32bit consoles (then promptly abandoned it). They released the Saturn with almost no fanfare in the US, and with last minute architectural hacks to make it pass as a 3D console (just barely). By the time the Dreamcast came out, people were just tired of Sega's shit.
- bitwize 8y agoA lot of people were stoked for the Dreamcast upon its release. What ultimately did it in was the PS2 -- a superior console in virtually every respect, released just two years later (in the USA).
- Izkata 8y agoOne year later in the US. The thing I remember as a kid was the hype for the PS2 building right as the Dreamcast was released. This was still in the era where most families would only have one console, so they ended up saving their money aiming for a PS2 instead of a Dreamcast. I think if the Dreamcast was released sooner or later it would have done better than it did. Either before the PS2 hype, or closer to the PS2 so the hype died down a bit.
- laumars 8y ago> What ultimately did it in was the PS2 -- a superior console in virtually every respect I beg to differ. Graphically it was, but it should be given it was two years younger. Sound quality it was too but honestly very few people would have noticed on the typical set up of that era. However the Dreamcast has 4 controller ports built into the console itself, rumble packs from day one, a portable gaming unit (ok, that was a bit of a novelty), support for using your save games on actual arcades, easy way of sharing save games, online gaming (a good 4 years before the competition too!), downloadable content (which was typically free back then). The Dreamcast was easily the more interesting console out of the two of them. If the reputation of the two companies had been equal then the DC would likely have won out. But the PS1 was already a proven success and Sega had messed their fans about with all the failed Megadrive /Genesis addons. So a great many gamers didn’t even give the Dreamcast a chance. In a sense, their expectations became a self fulfilling prophecy. I was gutted when the DC failed. No console before nor since has really captured my imagination quite as much as the Dreamcast did. But ultimately I wasn’t surprised either because Sony had already won even before releasing the PS2. Few people cared about Sega (or Nintendo) at that point.
- just_myles 8y agoYup. Piracy would have increased console sales and it didn't. Really as simple as that. The software was definitely there at the time. But, Sega you know, is Sega and ultimately all the good faith they had built in Western countries with the master system and Genesis had worn out with their mediocre add-ons and console (Saturn. I might add had great games.).
- ErneX 8y agoAgreed, the hype for the upcoming PS2 was enormous, and on the Dreamcast 3rd support side, the absence of Electronic Arts was a huge blow.