this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2024
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Dreamcast was a shit show.
I loved the games things and think it's the greatest system ever released with so many bangers under it's belt. It was Sega's arcade dna distilled into a console. And the home style games were amazing to boot. Jet Grind, Phantasy Star, Sonic Adventure. Plus all the Capcom love.
But I would have never bought one and gotten to experience it if it wasn't discontinued and clearance priced. I wish they gave it a second chance.
Any good write-ups about Sega? I wonder what was happening financially.
For the Dreamcast, specifically, there was a show on G4 (on cable, before merging w/ TechTV) that I remember casually watching a bajillion years ago that discussed what happened with the Dreamcast. Basically, the PS2 is what happened.
There's this 5 second blip of the program that burned itself into my brain where someone from Sega was talking about how awesome and exciting things were one moment, and then PS2, then *cricket sounds*. They mention how they had to stop production because they literally had warehouses filled with Dreamcasts just sitting there.
It was kinda nuts for them 'cause the Dreamcast actually sold pretty ok until people learned about the PS2's price and the fact you could watch DVDs on it, which alone was huge. Sony just fuckin instantly annihilated everyone so hard with the PS2. It wasn't feasible, timewise or financially, for Sega to iterate on a new system fast enough and somehow dump all the systems they had lying around, and they knew if they wanted to contiue to exist, they had to switch gears to be mostly software/publishing, aside from arcade cabinets.
Though (to me, sadly) Sega shed the last of their arcade board-makin days in 2021, they are the reigning champ and legends of bigass video game machines. They made more than 500 arcade games and produced over 20 arcade system boards that ended up being able to run stuff like huge Unreal Engine 4 games on dual 50" screens. They sold the last of their arcades back in 2022, leaving a pretty dope legacy behind, even though they're still kicking around otherwise. I guess COVID was to their arcades as the PS2 was to the Dreamcast.
Wasn't Dreamcast the second chance to the very unsuccessful Saturn? Not to hate on the Dreamcast, I wish it did better too. Sony's success kind of killed Sega though.
Oh, Sega was limping along well before the Saturn's failure let Sony finish them off. They completely fractured their market when they botched both the (expensive to manufacture) 32X and SegaCD, canceled the integrated (cheaper) Neptune, then failed to showcase the Saturn as their next generation while simultaneously making it too hard to develop for.
Even when Dreamcast finally became a clean-slate for Sega, it was far too late to serve as a 5th chance.
Second chance in that the Dreamcast was doing very well in the west, but not in Japan. They elected to kill it because the Japanese side was struggling. I dont think they saw much continued success without them. It was Peter Moore who ultimately made the call to kill the Dreamcast.