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Dreamcast's strength was the hardware. Adding a DVD player would have just increased the price out of realistic range. The problem was the software and 3rd party support. The library just could not compete with PS1 and N64 and then the greatest console of all time came out and put it out of its misery, the PS2.
Dreamcast had more games in its short lifespan than N64. The problem wasn’t software support.
I believe the problem was poor marketing. Especially after the failure of Saturn. Everybody was looking forward to PS2.
There's not really any one reason the Dreamcast failed, but the library being larger doesn't necessarily map to the library being better. The Dreamcast didn't have any heavy hitters on the level of a Mario 64, Mario Kart 64, GoldenEye or Ocarina of Time. In terms of games that are still in the mainstream consciousness, it's probably Sonic Adventure and Shenmue.
The library also had another thing that I think held it back from greater success: ports. Releasing so early, basically in the middle of the lifespan of the PS1 and N64, meant that a lot of the games were cross-platform with one or more previous-generation consoles. It's hard to demonstrate the power of a next-gen console when so many of the exact same games also worked fine on the consoles people already owned.
The other big source of ports in the Dreamcast library were arcade games. Sega was offering the ultimate in home ports of arcade games at exactly the time in the games industry when arcades were collapsing. The Dreamcast was the best way to play basically any cross-platform game that came out in that period, whether it was ported from arcade or lesser consoles, but ultimately they were games you could already play or that you specifically didn't want to.
I don't want to give the impression that the Dreamcast didn't have good or original games, it had both, just not "I must upgrade my console mid-gen"-quality games. It's a library that's aged very well but at the time, not enough people wanted what they were selling.
And part of the PS2's success was the built-in DVD player which was cheaper than non-console DVD players at the time. So if you were going to buy a DVD player anyway, you were better off buying a PS2, saving some money and getting a console at the same time.
Yeah I feel too many people overlook that in 2000 it was next to impossible to find a DVD player under $500 and then PS2 came out, lots if people who didn’t even game bought them because it was known for being better than anything even close to its price range.
N64 and PS1 have not aged well. I'd absolutely take a dreamcast over the N64 and the PS1 really only beats it on RPGs. If you don't have nostalgia for the 5th gen consoles, most of the games just aren't very fun anymore.
If you're going to go back in time to help Sega, you should go farther back and stop them from releasing the 32x against the Saturn.
A dvd player wasn't going to fix the internal dysfunction at Sega.
Or the weirdly anachronistic mess that is the Dreamcast in general. I mean, it's not easy to visualize today because a lot of the "just a tiny underpowered PC thing" approach ended up winning the day, but the Dreamcast made no sense whatsoever at the time and produced entirely absurd looking games.
Maybe you could try to rationalize the 480p thing as an advantage today, but at the time screenshot comparisons looked a generation apart next to the PS2.
... what?
Everything was limited to 480p. HDTV barely existed, and even VGA-out was a luxury. Yeah, the PS2 technically supports up to 1080i, but almost nobody used it, even when annual sportsball releases dragged on into the 2010s.
Meanwhile, screenshots were the worst way to see PS2 games, since its anti-aliasing was nonexistent. Some of its obscene fillrate comes from only emitting whole pixels. The Dreamcast's goofy tile-rendered PowerVR thingamajig only looked silly insofar as character animation tech was still mediocre. Blue Stinger has the same intersecting-blobs setup as Metal Gear Solid, minus the deliberately low-detail models that left everything to your imagination. Seriously, Snake doesn't have eyes. To the extent the Dreamcast has A Look that's distinct from the PS2, it's because Sega themselves were forced to make half the library, and they were cranking 'em out left and right.
If anything - the Dreamcast is extremely of-its-era. Sega was always an arcade company that stumbled into a home-console rivalry against an 800-pound gorilla wearing a red tie. Their games are very action-heavy, even years after Mario 64 embraced contemplative playground spaces. There's a very go-go-go atmosphere. They eventually chilled out a bit and made Shenmue, famously the inspiration for a decade of open-world games... including their awful gameplay and ballooning costs.
Also they included a modem as standard. They were really trying. It just did not work out.
Well, yeah, we're not disagreeing here. That's a great example, with the modem being in there in a world where a bunch of people barely had access to semi-functional Internet, let alone the willingness to surrender it to a game console for online gaming. And that's what I mean about the VGA out and HDTV support. Today both of those seem like forward looking thing if you squint hard enough, at the time they were irrelevant tech quirks.
And on the flipside, Sega sticking to the weird approach of still filling that library with arcade ports all over the place just as arcades were becoming irrelevant. Again, we're not disagreeing on that.
I'm going to disagree about how well the PS2 presented in screenshots, though. I remember looking at printouts of stuff like GT3, Silent Hill 2, GTA III or MGS 2. The launch lineup was one thing, but that second batch looked insane on print. I remember laughing off the screenshots of Silent Hill 2 showing their projected shadows and calling my friends gullible for thinking any of that would be realtime. Turns out, it totally was. Once that stuff hit gaming magazines the Dreamcast may as well not have existed. Shenmue may have been impressive against late day PSOne stuff, by the time Shenmue II launched it looked a generation out of date.
Maybe you could try to rationalize the 480p thing as an advantage today, but at the time screenshot comparisons looked a generation apart next to the PS2.
Which 480p thing? GameCube, PS2 and Dreamcast all output at 480p. Some games on the PS2 can upscale. But they render at that resolution.
Specifically the VGA 480p output, which was a big deal for most use cases.
I imagine there is some regional differentiation here based on HDTV adoption and SCART vs component, but for reference VGA out was still the sole way I had to get any progressive signal for gaming all the way down to my day one Xbox 360 in 2005, which did not have an HDMI out (not that I had any displays with an HDMI in, for that matter).
I see, though in fairness, most users probably didn't use their consoles on screens with VGA input.
Anyhow, nowadays, if you're willing to shell out the cash and mod your Dreamcast, it too can have HDMI output ;)
Yeah, that's the thing about it, right? It has all the pieces of the architecture of a modern console in a world where none of them make sense. Even with the 360 I was probably an outlier, and the reward you got by being able to access 720p video on a CRT PC monitor was much higher compared to a SDTV.
That's a normal architecture though, all consoles of that generation and at least the one before create the image digitally and just in the last step convert to analog so that the TVs from that time can display an image. The Dreamcast isn't an outlier in that regard. It made sense to use these components; the strength of the Dreamcast from my point of view was that it was a very complete package at the time. Sure it couldn't play DVDs, but it was quite earlier than the PlayStation 2, which came in more expensive with subsidies from Sony who as a member of the DVD Consortium (later DVD Forum) and movie studio had a vested interest in broadening the install base for DVD players. Plus Sony manufactured the drives themselves, which have them the numbers, there was no such option for Sega at that point in time.
Anyhow, I liked the Dreamcast for having 4 controller ports like the N64 instead of 2, and I also liked the selection of games because it was very arcade-y, but I had no arcades close by. But I also enjoyed the Sonic Adventures back then (not sure I still would though), Shenmue and Headhunter.
Personally I wouldn't call the Dreamcast revolutionary, even though it's my favorite console is all time. My biggest gripe with it isn't the lack of a DVD drive, this is completely irrelevant nowadays with SD card loaders, but the rarity of Ethernet adapters because of the piracy issue. But it was a good package (I still can't believe how good SoulCalibur looked back then, it agreed really well which is rare for 3D games from that time) for a fair price and a library that I really enjoyed.
Unlike the Gamecube and Xbox, which used DVD-like discs but just weren't licensed as DVD players (though Xbox later sold a "DVD Playback Kit" meant to cover licensing fees), Dreamcast's GD-ROMs were closely based on standard Compact Disc technology, just with dual-layer discs.
Upgrading the hardware would've increased costs considerably, GD-ROMs were meant to be a lot cheaper than the still very new DVD technology. Tech that did get cheaper by the time the PS2 hit the market nearly two years later, but Sega wanted to be early.
They always say the early bird gets the worm, but the early worm gets eatened. And sometimes you the worm.
Sometimes come the mother. Sometimes come the wolf.
You're missing that Sony co-owned the CD and DVD formats. They did not pay licensing. That's a big part of how the PS1 stomped all competition: they could afford to publish damn near anything, for a couple cents per disc.
Stop Bernie Stolar from being appointed as the head. He was the reason a lot of Dreamcast games were not localized
Why?
Some people believe the Sega Dreamcast was a superior console but that it failed to appeal to the mass market because the Playstation and the xBox also had the ability to play DVDs.
At the time DVD players were very popular and a standalone unit could cost in the ballpark of £100, so the ability to get a 2in1 unit that played games and DVDs was very attractive.
If Dreamcast should have had a niche it should have been using the VMU as a portable MP3 player and giving the Dreamcast the ability to rip music.
You're grossly overestimating what mobile tech was capable of in 1998. The dreamcast had enough power to play an mp3 but the VMU definitely did not. On top of that, the VMU only has enough storage space for a little over 6 seconds of music at 128kbps. Even if the Dreamcast could (very very slowly) rip CDs to MP3 , you still had no where to save the data.
No shit the VMU as it was isn't capable of MP3 capabilities. Not sure how crazy tech advanced you think mp3 players were in the beginning, the simplest mp3 players didn't even have a screen, they were plug n play with direct drop file library- no software required and ran on a single AA battery. Also not sure why you think the disc reader wasn't fast enough. Most people were happy to spend 2-3 hours ripping and burning a music disc. I think you're comparing it to modern day expectations.
The Dreamcast came out in time where people were happy with any tech that was dual purpose and any that was cable of multiple functions received huge attention.
Here's Sega's VMU Mp3 player prototype: not saying this specific one would have been the one, just saying it's capable.
https://www.thedreamcastjunkyard.co.uk/2016/10/a-closer-look-at-dreamcast-mp3-player.html?m=1
If the Dreamcast didn't get discontinued in early 2001 then sure, it's possible they could have released an mp3 player vmu. We don't even know if the TGS prototype was a functional unit or just conceptual mockup. Either way, it would still be a case of too little too late.
When I said it would rip CDs very slowly I was referring to the processing speed, not the drive speed. Comparable processors of the time would encode at about 0.6-0.8x speed depending on the encoder used and I doubt the average consumer would want to spend 2 hours to encode a single CD worth of music on their dreamcast.
Sega was broke and developers hated them. Hardware was zero percent of their problem.
... okay, dead easy piracy thanks to karaoke CDs probably didn't help.
But the Dreamcast crammed a ton of high-energy games into a very short lifespan, mostly from Sega themselves, because they'd burned out all goodwill throughout the 90s. They just barely survived the Playstation eating everyone's lunch. They knew it wouldn't happen twice.
If there is anything I’ve learned from the grand history of the console wars, it’s that they play by highlander rules ** there can only be one!** or more precisely there can only be two plus Nintendo who is a separate entity and irrelevant to console discussions. Xbox and Steam Deck is about to fight to the death just like Sony killed Sega.