What killed the Dreamcast?

[cthellis42]

What killed the Dreamcast?

Personally, I think it was due to the frequency of this topic coming up on message boards and a freak wormhole in time.

 

[randycat99]

It could happen!

 

[fulcizombie]

Its failure in Japan and Europe.If Dreamcast had a similar to its U.S retail performance in Japan ,it would have survived.Dreamcast was actually not doing bad at all in the U.S market and the christmas period of 2000 looked to be a great one for dreamcast due to the severe shortages of the ps2 and great dreamcast games'library plus a very competitive price(+ the fact that early ps2 titles looked like ass compared to the best the DC had to offer).

Unfortunately the DC had died prematurely in Japan(strange really since the saturn was a decent success there) and couldn't hold its own in Europe(where sega had made some horrible marketing decisions like the Arsenal ultra-expensive sponsoring).So with 2 out of 3 markets out(plus a huge failure in the form of Shenmue) it was only a matter of time.The fact that another giant was entering the console industry(microsoft) couldn't have helped either.

I strongly believe that if Sega was a strong company the DC would ,ultimately,become a big success in the U.S market.The decision to kill the DC came from the Japanese arm of Sega,i still remember reading at various magazines at the times how shocked the people of SoA were.

 

[mercury]

2. Lack of confidence in Sega (Saturn, 32x)

That might be the biggest reason.

 

[UKt@xman]

Unfortunately the DC had died prematurely in Japan(strange really since the saturn was a decent success there) and couldn't hold its own in Europe(where sega had made some horrible marketing decisions like the Arsenal ultra-expensive sponsoring).

....and what a huge mistake that was for the UK market, where football is like a religion with Arsenal being the Antichrist! As the late great Brian Clough once said, the only people that don't hate Arsenal are the Arsenal fans. So effectively SEGA alienated a huge swathe of sports fans, who were also their target demographic!

 

[Pozer]

1. Unrealistic PS2 hype. (cgi quality gfx etc.)
2. Lack of confidence in Sega (Saturn, 32x)
3. Lack of quality launch software and known franchises.
4. Sega lacked ca$h
5. Horrible controller.
6. Lack of advertising after launch.
7. EA

8. It couldn't/didn't do anything ps1/n64 could, minus fancier gfx.

I agree with all points but 3 and 5. The Dreamcast easily had the best launch line up in quality and quanity. I can't remember the whole line up but there were 2 AAA quality titles in soul calibre and NFL2K. I bought like 8 games at the dreamcast launch there were plenty of good titles from day one.

I personally liked the controller. The only problem was in fighting games but then the PS2,Xbox and GC controllers suck for fighting games.

YOu DC guys and your SC chants. Yes it was a awsome game but sadly there wasn't much else worth playing until Code Veronica. I own a DC and minus the imports I can think of only a handful of GREAT games and only 1 was launch game. Man can not survive on soul caliber alone!

Sega is great software house but they weren't big enough to amass enough good launch titles and they didn't have the 3rd party support to get their back.

 

[Evil_Cloud]

1. Unrealistic PS2 hype. (cgi quality gfx etc.)
2. Lack of confidence in Sega (Saturn, 32x)
3. Lack of quality launch software and known franchises.
4. Sega lacked ca$h
5. Horrible controller.
6. Lack of advertising after launch.
7. EA

8. It couldn't/didn't do anything ps1/n64 could, minus fancier gfx.

I agree with all points but 3 and 5. The Dreamcast easily had the best launch line up in quality and quanity. I can't remember the whole line up but there were 2 AAA quality titles in soul calibre and NFL2K. I bought like 8 games at the dreamcast launch there were plenty of good titles from day one.

I personally liked the controller. The only problem was in fighting games but then the PS2,Xbox and GC controllers suck for fighting games.

YOu DC guys and your SC chants. Yes it was a awsome game but sadly there wasn't much else worth playing until Code Veronica. I own a DC and minus the imports I can think of only a handful of GREAT games and only 1 was launch game. Man can not survive on soul caliber alone!

Sega is great software house but they weren't big enough to amass enough good launch titles and they didn't have the 3rd party support to get their back.

And Sony did with PS2? It took two years before there was a decent 'stream' of titles or so...

 

[Kolgar]

Having EA made all the difference.

 

[Pozer]

1. Unrealistic PS2 hype. (cgi quality gfx etc.)
2. Lack of confidence in Sega (Saturn, 32x)
3. Lack of quality launch software and known franchises.
4. Sega lacked ca$h
5. Horrible controller.
6. Lack of advertising after launch.
7. EA

8. It couldn't/didn't do anything ps1/n64 could, minus fancier gfx.

I agree with all points but 3 and 5. The Dreamcast easily had the best launch line up in quality and quanity. I can't remember the whole line up but there were 2 AAA quality titles in soul calibre and NFL2K. I bought like 8 games at the dreamcast launch there were plenty of good titles from day one.

I personally liked the controller. The only problem was in fighting games but then the PS2,Xbox and GC controllers suck for fighting games.

YOu DC guys and your SC chants. Yes it was a awsome game but sadly there wasn't much else worth playing until Code Veronica. I own a DC and minus the imports I can think of only a handful of GREAT games and only 1 was launch game. Man can not survive on soul caliber alone!

Sega is great software house but they weren't big enough to amass enough good launch titles and they didn't have the 3rd party support to get their back.

And Sony did with PS2? It took two years before there was a decent 'stream' of titles or so...

but Sony had an army of 3rd party software "coming soon". I do agree the ps2 launch lineup was incredibly sad. The DC games of the time were graphically superior to boot.

 

[Lazy8s]

The Dreamcst launched with Soul Calibur, NFL 2K, Sonic Adventure, Power Stone, The House of the Dead II, Ready to Rumble Boxing, Hydro Thunder, and Tokyo Xtreme Racing among others in the US.

 

[Blazkowicz]

What killed my dreamcast is.. the CD drive doesn't even spin up anymore
I should find another unit, I have about 20 games, lots of those I didn't even try. (three are japanese). And even a never used CD with NES emulator and lots of games ^^

the console had great games and graphics (640x480 and more video RAM than PS2!). What was really enjoyable is that it came with a RGB scart cable here in France, instead of the crap RCA composite we get since the PSX and N64 days , the image quality was excellent out of the box

(Here old TV sets from the 80's are compatible with RGB but not composite)

 

[TEXAN]

If the DC was still going it's fully funded 4th and 5th gen games would be visually destroying anything on the PS2.

We never got the opportunity to see what the machine could really do.

 

[Tacitblue]

I still play MDK2 on mine amongst others.....the original MDK2....not the watered down choose difficulty version on PS2. Hard as hell to beat Zizzy with anyone but Doc.

 

[Evil_Cloud]

If the DC was still going it's fully funded 4th and 5th gen games would be visually destroying anything on the PS2.

We never got the opportunity to see what the machine could really do.

Dreamcast still had some juice in it, but Shenmue II already taxed the system to it's near limit though... Sure Dreamcast could've run Virtua Fighter 4 at least as good as PlayStation 2 or even better due to the resemblances with NAOMI 2, but destroying 'anything on the PS2' is 'a little' far fetched IMO...

 

[London Geezer]

If the DC was still going it's fully funded 4th and 5th gen games would be visually destroying anything on the PS2.

We never got the opportunity to see what the machine could really do.

Deadmeat get out of here for god's sake, how many times do you need to be told (and banned)?

 

[Spidermate]

Sega killed the dreamcast .

At the time they pulled the plug there were over 12 million dcs out there. THey had good subscribers to thier isp and thier games were still selling vrey well .


Sega just bailed out thinking that nintendo and ms would finish off the job but i would wager the dc would have hit at least 20 million even with the gc and xbox on the market . That would have been more than enough for sega to make money off the box .

Oh well its sad but nothing you can do

Actually, Sony did kill the Dreamcast. Sega said it themselves in a 30 minute interview. Their console was selling great before Sony annouced the PS2.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

If the DC was still going it's fully funded 4th and 5th gen games would be visually destroying anything on the PS2.

Eventhough you are probably the most biased fanboi I have ever seen and almost as grazy as nirey and clearly facts don't exist in your world, I would still like to hear what on earth makes you believe that Dremcast titles would visually destroy PS2 titles