I really do not get what happened to Dreamcast? I am confused again.
While fathoms makes a good point about the big business aspect of it, I' ve always maintained that the problems went deeper than that.
Alot of factors can be attributed to the resulting fate of the Dreamcast.
But I think a famous phrase like " The sins of the father is visited onto the son" or something like that is appropriate for the situation with the Dreamcast. Basically my beloved Sega burned a few too many bridges in the past with things like the 32x, and the Sega CD... The Saturn, while my most favorite system of all time, really shook up developer faith in them. You didn' t see EA rushing to get back on the Sega train when they brought out the Dreamcast - I think the pain of the Saturn was still fresh on their minds.
I think basically what it comes down to is that Sega has always been an underdog, and Sega of America even claimed to enjoy that title. When they released the Sega Master System, they really struggled with that console in the U.S. and Japan - (I hear Europeans took more of a liking to it than the other regions). Nintendo had a lock-down on 3rd party support and basically if you developed games for them you weren' t allowed to do so for any competing consoles. Thanks to Sega' s huge arcade presence they weathered that tremendous storm and rebounded with the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive. Against all odds the Genesis/Mega Drive became a HUGE success in the U.S. and Europe, pummeling the mighty Nintendo by taking half of the console market from them. Japan was another story and the Mega Drive was getting its a$$ kicked by both Nintendo and NEC. Didn' t matter as Sega was kickin @$$ in Europe, the U.S. as well as in arcades, all of which was Much more than enough to carry Japan' s slack. They had great marketing, a huge variety of games and were sitting pretty with FAT pockets lined with gold.
But their Cinderella story wouldn' t last past the Genesis era as they became a little too overly ambitious and began making a few mistakes here and there. First with the release of the Sega CD (Mistake #1) - which many believe was their answer to the Super Nintendo' s high quality Sony soundchip and Mode 7 capabilities. The unit flopped as it was wayyy too expensive for starters. Then as if they hadn' t learned from that, Sega of AMERICA had the *GENIUS* idea of releasing the 32x add-on for the Genesis (Mistake #2).
I emphasize " Sega of AMERICA" simply because Sega of Japan was against the 32x. They were already working on their next full blown console, the Sega Saturn, and saw no need for the 32x add-on. Sega of America got their way, the 32x was released, was overpriced and it flopped as well. Alot of people point to the 32x as the start of Sega' s GREAT fall in the console market. So by now, they had two failed endeavors with their overpriced add-on devices and consumer faith was shakened a bit - especially by those who purchased said devices.
We had finally entered the 32-bit era full bore and both Sega and Sony had 32-bit consoles ready to hit the market. Unfortunately Sega was caught with its pants down as it came ill prepared to the fight. They were still stuck on the idea of using outdated 2D technology in their console (Mistake #3) while Sony had moved onto 3D, as did alot of gamers. I NEVER understood why Sega, who were pretty much the pioneers of 3D gaming in Arcades would limit their console to 2D, especially when you have to factor in that they' d have to convert some of those 3D arcade games of theirs to console someday. One little newsbit that was kinda funny back then was reading how Sega' s R&D manager stormed into the R&D labs and totally lambasted the engineers for being outdone by a newcomer (Sony). Afterwards, they tossed in another CPU into the Saturn which gave it its extra 2D horsepower and some 3D capabilities as well. But such a last minute addition drove the price of the hardware up and when it was finally released alongside the Playstation in Japan back in late 1994 it was $100 more expensive than Sony' s console (Mistake #4).
Despite being overpriced, the Saturn still managed to put a whoopin on the Playstation' s arse in Japan. Consistently outselling it over there until Squaresoft announced that they were jumping ship over to Sony. America and Europe were different stories as they struggled from the get-go. Sega of America thought they' d pull a fast one on the competition by releasing the Saturn 4 months earlier than its official September release date. The console was overpriced ($400) and had VERY little games available at launch and the following months leading to the Playstation launch.(Mistakes #5 & 6)
Sony stuck to its September release date and had a pretty solid launch with a cheaper console that could do better 3D and had a solid launch line-up. The Saturn flopped in both Europe and the U.S., the only success story was Japan. In fact, the Saturn remains the only successful console Sega has ever had in Japan.
It was also more notable during the Saturn era that Sega had alot of internal problems with their different regions. Instead of competing against their REAL rivals, Sony and Nintendo, Sega pretty much competed against themselves.
There was a bit of selfishness during that era as well. The Saturn was too hard to program thanks to the dual CPU architecture. It' s been often said that the only ones who truly knew how to program the Saturn was Sega themselves and they weren' t sharing any of their findings with other developers. Developers had to struggle and find their own way (Mistake #7). Playstation was WAYYYYYY easier to program AND Sony held the hands of developers, showing them the tricks of the trade. A sharp contrast to Sega withholding information. Developers just loved Sony.
Saturn was too expensive, they needed killer apps, Sonic was still HUGE and Sega needed to capitalize on his popularity. They needed a Sonic game and Sega of America was working to satisfy that need. They put together a team but it was still a hefty task to build an engine from scratch. But then they found out about Yuji Naka' s NiGHTS engine and requested it as it was perfect to get their Sonic Xtreme game up and running in no time to meet the demand. Sega of Japan obliged and gave it to them and Yuji Naka threw a fit and had the engine taken away from them. I love Yuji Naka don' t get me wrong, but talking about being a real b*tch! lol.. He should have been more of a team player, hell supervise the Sonic project, take it over, I don' t care, but to cause its demise was kind of dumb and all it did was hurt Sega instead of helping them (Mistake #8).
Sega' s marketing had also degenerated tremendously. Their marketing during the Genesis era was wonderful! They even had people walking around singing the " Genesis does what Nintendon' t" song, it was great! But come the Saturn era and their marketing department went into a coma. " Fly play thing fly" ?? You kidding me? lol.. (Mistake #9)
One of the most significant problems Sega faced during the Saturn era was that they were bleeding money all over the place. While the arcade market has always been a profitable venture for them, the Saturn console was just draining their life away. It was one thing to have the Genesis console be a tremendous success in two territories and buoy the Japanese market, but it was a losing proposition to have the Saturn fail in two territories and have Sega of Japan carry the slack for them.
Which finally brings us to the Dreamcast. By the time that baby came around Sega was deep in the red, developer support was pretty shaky, and they lost a good number of the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive fanbase. You factor that in with CONTINUOUS internal problems and you have a recipe for disaster.
People say that the PS2 is what killed the Dreamcast, I' ve never bought into that. The market can support multiple consoles, it has shown that it can. The Dreamcast could have easily survived and been sitting pretty on Sega Genesis-like success, but that wasn' t happening. Too many fans felt burned one too many times with all of the previous overpriced hardware releases like the Sega CD, 32x and Saturn. The Dreamcast was a kicka$$ console but was a miserable failure in Japan. I don' t care what anyone says, it sold crappily over there. I was shocked to see that it still hadn' t managed to sell 1 million units in Japan by the time the U.S. release rolled out.. The U.S. Dreamcast sold more units in 3 months than Japanese version did in one whole year. The European Dreamcast business also bombed as well. The only small success story was happening here in the U.S.
The U.S. launch was a success and Sega had a few million sellers in the form of their Sega Sports games and the original Sonic Adventure, as well as Near million sellers like Crazy Taxi. But unfortunately the success happening here just wasn' t enough to carry the slack for Europe and Japan. Sega was continuously announcing financial losses year in year out and and ontop of the struggling Dreamcast business they had not one major competitor but Three nipping at their heels.
They just weren' t as strong as they were during the Genesis era to fend off this kind of competition in their weakened state. It was time to pull the plug on the Dreamcast business... If they had the marketing savvy and FAT pockets they had during the 16-bit era, as well as having never released the Sega CD and 32x, and releasing the Saturn at a reasonable price, we might be seeing a different picture painted today, but that' s a What If situation that we' ll never know the answer to.
Sorry for rambling, LOL, that' s just the historian side of me. :D
< Message edited by Terry Bogard -- 9/10/2004 7:48:17 PM >