The failure of SEGA

[tarheelhockey]

I was 10 when it came out and don't remember seeing or hearing anything about this thing till it was about dead.

Same here. Genesis was HUGE during its heyday, so it's actually kind of strange how little market penetration the Dreamcast got. It was the sort of thing you saw in a magazine or maybe knew one kid at school who had one, but had never actually held in your own hands. Kind of like a Windows Phone or something.

 

[SniperHF]

how little market penetration the Dreamcast got. It was the sort of thing you saw in a magazine or maybe knew one kid at school who had one, but had never actually held in your own hands. Kind of like a Windows Phone or something.

For a good 3 months or so when the Bestbuy near where I lived got a demo Dreamcast it was like a themepark line to play it. Never knew anyone that actually owned one though

 

[awesomo]

Funny about the dream cast thing whereeveryone had a binder of games.


I was pretty young to understand how easy it was. But I had 2 friends with dreamcasts and both had a binder lol

 

[JESSEWENEEDTOCOOK]

sega was doomed the moment they royally ****ed up the release of the saturn

not to mention the complicated processors in the system which made it harder for developers to master

shame, it was a damn good console that not nearly enough people get to experience with the exorbitant prices of games for it nowadays

 

[Emperoreddy]

I was 10 when it came out and don't remember seeing or hearing anything about this thing till it was about dead.

Same here. Genesis was HUGE during its heyday, so it's actually kind of strange how little market penetration the Dreamcast got. It was the sort of thing you saw in a magazine or maybe knew one kid at school who had one, but had never actually held in your own hands. Kind of like a Windows Phone or something.

The total failure of the Saturn is the answer. It barely sold and Sega was pretty much forgotten during that generation.

They weren't able to regain enough momentum with the Dreamcast before Sony wiped the floor with them.

 

[blue425]

Microsoft coming in would of pushed Sega out if they lingered on and released another system. I think they did talk about teaming up before it all fell apart.

The game lineup for the Dreamcast was a double edged sword. The games were great, but I don't think they were system sellers. Fighters and arcade games don't push systems. Especially at that point when gamers were really craving for games that really pushed the home experience like Metal Gear, Final Fantasy, stuff like that.

No EA hurt. Madden was that eras Call of Duty.

I imagine the piracy hurt Sega's bottom line, but unless it kept third parties away I don't think it hurt the Dreamcast directly. People still had to buy the system.

In fighting between Sega of Japan and Sega of America definitely hurt marketing and game development. They weren't on the same page with much of anything.

These are all great points that I missed and agree with. Even if Sega had held on I still see them bowing out at some point.

Your stance on piracy not hurting the DC is in the minority, but I happen to agree with it 100%.

 

[MayDay]

I never even played the Dreamcast, but I did have a Saturn. Some good games there. Good little system.

There was a helicopter combat game that I remember being really enthralled with. Thunderstrike II. Had to look it up.

Sega Rally was also a fun racing game for Saturn.

 

[KingBran]

The Dreamcast was notable for four different kinds of games: fighters (some of the best fighting games ever), JRPGs, arcade staples and weird experiments. If you like those, then the Dreamcast is worth a purchase so long as you feel comfortable with the price. I would put down $150 on it max if it's brand new, otherwise go with however you feel.

The classics for me:

FIGHTERS
Soulcalibur
Power Stone 2
Marvel vs. Capcom 2
Dead or Alive 2
Street Fighter III: Third Strike

RPGs
Grandia II
Skies of Arcadia (personal favorite, also available for Gamecube)
Phantasy Star Online (so long as you are willing to search for private servers)
Silver
Evolution 1/2

ARCADE
Crazy Taxi 1/2
Sonic Adventure 1/2 (especially 2, the last scion of great Sonic games)
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2
Metropolis Street Racer
Jet Set Radio

EXPERIMENTAL
Shenmue 1/2 (probably the signature series of the console)
Samba de Amigo (but only if it comes with Maracas)
Space Channel 5 (for the sheer weird)
Chu Chu Rocket
Seaman (this one requires a microphone and is ****ed)

Some of them are available on other consoles and steam as well, so keep an eye out for that.

The memories!

Okay I seriously need to go buy a Dreamcast again. Seaman was epic! Lenard Nemoy narrated the game too. If you didn't let Nemoy talk and say everything before you would choose an option on the menu he would interrupt himself and say "Ohh well" like he doesn't care anymore. It was amazing. The microphone was silly but I remember talking to my "fish" all the time.

Man I was such a loser kid.

 

[X66]

The Dreamcast was notable for four different kinds of games: fighters (some of the best fighting games ever), JRPGs, arcade staples and weird experiments. If you like those, then the Dreamcast is worth a purchase so long as you feel comfortable with the price. I would put down $150 on it max if it's brand new, otherwise go with however you feel.

The classics for me:

FIGHTERS
Soulcalibur
Power Stone 2
Marvel vs. Capcom 2
Dead or Alive 2
Street Fighter III: Third Strike

RPGs
Grandia II
Skies of Arcadia (personal favorite, also available for Gamecube)
Phantasy Star Online (so long as you are willing to search for private servers)
Silver
Evolution 1/2

ARCADE
Crazy Taxi 1/2
Sonic Adventure 1/2 (especially 2, the last scion of great Sonic games)
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2
Metropolis Street Racer
Jet Set Radio

EXPERIMENTAL
Shenmue 1/2 (probably the signature series of the console)
Samba de Amigo (but only if it comes with Maracas)
Space Channel 5 (for the sheer weird)
Chu Chu Rocket
Seaman (this one requires a microphone and is ****ed)

Some of them are available on other consoles and steam as well, so keep an eye out for that.

I was there to, beat almost all the games on that list. Put more hours into Phantasy Star than any kid should have lol.

In terms of fighting games, it was the king console.

Even outside of those that you mentioned, it had:

Capcom vs SNK 1&2
Virtua Fighter 3
The King of Fighters: Dream Match 1999
Street Fighter Alpha 3
Garou: Mark of the Wolves
Gulity Gear
Last Blade 1&2
Jojo's Bizarre adventure
Vampire Chronicles
Super Street Fighter 2X

And it had the best arcade stick from its time.

That Catalog of fighting games is actually ridiculous, spent thousands of hours between them all.

 

[Emperoreddy]

These are all great points that I missed and agree with. Even if Sega had held on I still see them bowing out at some point.

Your stance on piracy not hurting the DC is in the minority, but I happen to agree with it 100%.

It definitely hurt Sega the company. That is money coming off their bottom line, and they were already losing money on every DC sold due to price cuts, not to mention losing money on Seganet because they offered a lot of free one year sign ups to try and encourage sales.

Without the piracy maybe they have enough in the bank to limp on for another couple of years.

We seem to be on the same page that the software piracy doesn't seem to have a direct correlation to poor hardware sales that prematurely killed the system.

I mentioned it another post, but it gets lost in the shuffle of their great North American launch, that their Japanese launch was a just a complete mess that cost them a lot of valuable lead time on Sony and a lot of money in the above mentioned price cuts.

It did make me wonder if Sega could of done things just a little differently they could of stayed afloat with an heavy North American focus like the Xbox eventually did.

Especially if they somehow managed to bad a big FPS and tie it into Seganet like Microsoft eventually did with Halo and Xbox Live.

My guess is even then they would of needed to form a hardware partnership with Microsoft to do that though. I have read Microsoft was open to some kind of partnership early on before Sega completely fell apart.

 

[KingBran]

Lets not forget the best (in my opinion) Resident evil debuted on the Dreamcast.

 

[GlassesJacketShirt]

Lets not forget the best (in my opinion) Resident evil debuted on the Dreamcast.

Oh right, can't believe I forgot Code Veronica. Was easily the best Resident Evil before 4 came out. I think it was the first to use actual 3D environments in the series, could be wrong on that.

And yeah, the console was gold if you loved fighting games. So many great ones. Also had some excellent racing games like Test Drive Le Mans and San Francisco Rush 2049, the latter was hella fun.

Also had the superior version of Rayman 2, and the tennis games were very fun. Outside of maybe baseball, the sports games were excellent on the Dreamcast for their time.

 

[RandV]

sega was doomed the moment they royally ****ed up the release of the saturn

not to mention the complicated processors in the system which made it harder for developers to master

shame, it was a damn good console that not nearly enough people get to experience with the exorbitant prices of games for it nowadays

Yeah I eventually traded in my Saturn for a PS1, but I had a rather nice collection of games for it:

Panzer Dragoon
Daytona USA
Virtua Fighter 2
NHL '97
NiGHTS into Dreams
Iron Storm
Dragon Force

Had a lot of fun with it before I traded it in for a Playstation. From my perspective the Saturn had the superior games library in the key categories up until Sony launched a certain trifecta of games: Tekken 3, Need for Speed, and FFVII. After that it steamrolled, but in my opinion the Saturn still had a good maybe 2 years on top.

 

[X66]

Guardian Heroes was my Jam on Saturn.

 

[syz]

Oh yea, I guess it was around the same time that *******s like me were idling overnight in the Quake 2 lobby on Heat.net for free copies of Diablo 2.

That probably didn't help Sega out.

Got Diablo 2 though.

 

[blue425]

I mentioned it another post, but it gets lost in the shuffle of their great North American launch, that their Japanese launch was a just a complete mess that cost them a lot of valuable lead time on Sony and a lot of money in the above mentioned price cuts.

It did make me wonder if Sega could of done things just a little differently they could of stayed afloat with an heavy North American focus like the Xbox eventually did.

Especially if they somehow managed to bad a big FPS and tie it into Seganet like Microsoft eventually did with Halo and Xbox Live.

My guess is even then they would of needed to form a hardware partnership with Microsoft to do that though. I have read Microsoft was open to some kind of partnership early on before Sega completely fell apart.

I had no idea that the Japanese launch was a **** show. Your last paragraph made me think what would gaming be like today had Microsoft bought Sega outright.

Here is an article you might find interesting:

http://whatculture.com/gaming/8-reasons-why-xbox-360-was-basically-the-dreamcast-2

And it had the best arcade stick from its time.

The Green Goblin is a great stick. I am more partial to the HSS 136. They're both a pain in the ass to mod though.

 

[PeterSidorkiewicz]

I never had a Dreamcast but my college dorm roommate did, we would play Virtua Tennis constantly. Don't mess with Tommy Haas.

 

[blue425]

Also I feel this is the place to point this out:

Sega's mighty little white box, The Dreamcast, is still getting new releases to this day. It is true some of them are ****, but a fair number are actually high quality and worth playing.

I am particularly excited for the upcoming Slave. Think Robotron 2084 on a modified Doom engine.

 

[Emperoreddy]

I had no idea that the Japanese launch was a **** show. Your last paragraph made me think what would gaming be like today had Microsoft bought Sega outright.

Here is an article you might find interesting:

http://whatculture.com/gaming/8-reasons-why-xbox-360-was-basically-the-dreamcast-2



The Green Goblin is a great stick. I am more partial to the HSS 136. They're both a pain in the ass to mod though.

Total **** show. Saturn levels of bad.

Games weren't ready so the launch lineup was nonexistent, supply issues.

I've read that the similarities between the Dreamcast and Xbox controllers was no accident, and Microsoft briefly explored making the Xbox backwards compatiable with the Dreamcast.

 

[KingBran]

Oh right, can't believe I forgot Code Veronica. Was easily the best Resident Evil before 4 came out. I think it was the first to use actual 3D environments in the series, could be wrong on that.

And yeah, the console was gold if you loved fighting games. So many great ones. Also had some excellent racing games like Test Drive Le Mans and San Francisco Rush 2049, the latter was hella fun.

Also had the superior version of Rayman 2, and the tennis games were very fun. Outside of maybe baseball, the sports games were excellent on the Dreamcast for their time.

Well I reminded you of RE:CV and you reminded me of Rush 2049. How did I forget that one? I had so many hours into that game. It was incredible. Definitely a must have.

 

[Emperoreddy]

Is there a favorite Dreamcast game that hasn't gotten a good port yet?

 

[McRpro]

I was in my early teens during the 16 bit wars. I preferred the SNES but also had a Genesis. I was also one of the suckers that bought a Sega CD and 32X. The Sega CD flopping was one thing but the 32X should never have existed in the fist place since the Saturn was right around the corner. The moment the Saturn launched the 32X died and with it, any chance of me owning another Sega system.

I remember walking into the local Microplay game store in the summer that year and being wowed that the Saturn had already been released, months ahead of schedule. It would have been a bold strategy by Sega to beat Sony to the punch but the problem was that not many developers even knew. There was an absolute dearth of games for months. By the time the system started getting good games I had already made the jump into the new era of low polygon graphics and long load times. I never even gave the Dreamcast a chance due to all of Sega's failures from the past. The system dying out quickly was certainly no shocker to me.

 

[Emperoreddy]

Sega did so much wrong with the Saturn that it was straight comical.

 

[blue425]

Is there a favorite Dreamcast game that hasn't gotten a good port yet?

I'll include after market games too These are all off the top of my head and are games I own so there are sure to be a few more:

Fur Fighters - PS 2 version has some issues. <----This one is super fun. Played it for the first time two years ago.

Power Stone 1 and 2
Gunbird 2
Zero Gunner 2
Mars Matrix

After Market: The 1st two are available for the Neo Geo MVS but are super $$ of course. They will run you about $50 on the DC.

Gunlord
Fast Striker
Sturmwind - This game was made by two brothers over the course of 12 years. The graphics are gorgeous and I am not using that word lightly. It looks like a 360 game no joke.

It makes me weep when I think what a developer like Capcom could have done with the DC given a few years to figure the hardware out.

Also if my list hasn't already given it away I am a huge shooter fan