Why the dreamcast failed

[aa]

The Dreamcast failed because it was released too early. in 1999, people were still buying and playing the PS1 and the Nintendo 64, so the desire to buy a next-generation console in 1999 was actually very limited (limited to the hardcore gamers). In 2000, the best late games for the PS1 and the nintendo 64 were just being released: Perfect Dark, Mario Party, Zelda, and Paper Mario for the Nintendo 64 and Time Crisis, Gran Turismo 2, and Final Fantasy 9 for the Playstation. Moreover, Sony was able to follow up its brilliant titles with marketing the extremely cheaply priced PS One and a brilliant marketing campaign for the PS2. So even in 2000 there was only a marginal increase in the desire to buy a next-generation console, and the mainstream was happy enough with the wide variety of excellent current-generation games still available. In top of all this, the Dreamcast had run out of steam by December 2000, the time when the PS2 was released, and in 2001 there was only the mediocre Sonic Adventure 2 to be released on the Dreamcast. Thus by March 2001 Sega had played all its best cards and found itself defeated. It could have continued the Dreamcast, but Sega realized that it could earn more profits by creating sequels for the excellent games it had already released on the Dreamcast. And if we look at Sega in this way, it does not look as if the company had backfired, as it is still generating reasonably good profits. Thus the failure of the Dreamcast was neither inevitable nor the decision of a resigned and helpless Sega, but a shrewd tactic used for the company to continue generating very reasonable profits. In another words Dreamcast never died but lives on in games like Soul Calibur 2 and 3, etc.

[Luke]

No. The Dreamcast failed because the PS2 could play DVD's and was backwards compatible with PS1 games.

[aa]

That is the traditional reasoning, and ive found that not only to be too simple but just false. You see, only a marginal number of gamers actually cared about the PS2 playing DVDs (and media critics), as most people were still satisfied with playing VHS in 2000. Hardcore Sony fans did care about the PS2 playing DVDs and bought the console at the end of 2000, but most people did not buy the console at that time. Rather the sales for the PS2 steadily increased in 2001 and dramatically increased in 2002, and this was due both to the release of Grand Theft Auto 3 in late 2001 and the release of many anticipated sequels of popular PS1 games in the year 2002: Metal Gear Solid 2, Final Fantasy 10, Tekken 4, etc. It was also the reason why Ico, a fantastic game on the PS2, failed to grab mainstream attention when it was released: it was released too early in the console's lifespan, and it was not the sequel to a critically acclaimed PS1 game. Capcom initially had trouble reaching enough sales with the original Devil May Cry (it wasnt as popular as Resident Evil for the PS1 had been), and only with the release of Devil May Cry 2 in 2002 did the franchise actually begin to pick up speed (even though most people consider Devil May Cry 2 to be a worse game than the original).
People did care that the PS2 was backwards compatible with the PS1 though, but this alone was not enough of a reason to bring down the Dreamcast. The fact was that most casual gamers began to pick up interest in next-generation consoles from as late as mid-2001, and most bought them in either late-2001 or 2002. And by then the Dreamcast would already be backward compared to the raw power of the Xbox and the Gamecube. But the more important reason was the lack of games Sega could continue to produce and market for the Dreamcast in order to continue the system: it had run out of steam by early 2001 and most developers were opting for the PS2. No matter how many games Sega could have produced in 2001, it simply could not have competed with the enormous number of third-party developers the PS2 already had. It was also becoming costly to continue the Dreamcast online service, and this was a major reason, as with a decreasing number of customers it became unfeasible to continue online for the Dreamcast. And with online discontinued for the Dreamcast and losing third-party support, what advantage does the Dreamcast then have over its competitors

[ajsmart1]

No support from EA.

[Julio III]

[QUOTE=Luke]No. The Dreamcast failed because the PS2 could play DVD's and was backwards compatible with PS1 games.[/QUOTE]

These were the main reasons I bought my PS2 in 2006!
(Actually, the main reason was Outrun2006, but that was available on Xbox as well, so these are the reasons I chose a PS2!)

[Megavolt]

[QUOTE=Luke]No. The Dreamcast failed because the PS2 could play DVD's and was backwards compatible with PS1 games.[/QUOTE]
I agree.  That and the poor reputation of Sega going against the crazy hype for PS2 (a hype which was magnified by the holiday shortage).  The PS2 was slow out the gate but those things sustained it until MGS2 and GTAIII arrived.

Also, the publications did have a way of heaping praise upon the Dreamcast and yet never failing to remind people of Sega's past failures.  The Dreamcast was too little too late, although it's interesting to note that it was the Dreamcast's inability to take the number two spot from the N64 that finally sealed its fate.

[N64Dude1]

First of all Dreamcast killed the N64,the 2000 titles simply brought N64 back for a brief while

Next of all brand loyalty,the fact that Dreamcast was not casually marketed(Dreamcast was like PS3,N64 was like 360,and PlayStation was like Wii).Only Casual systems with loads of crap seem to take the top which has been a rule

SegaNet was released waaaaaay too late and PS2 overshadowed it.

No support from EA,so what ? N64 had no support from Square, Konami,Namco whatsoever but it still sold 33 million,SNES didn't really have EA either but guess what it beat Genesis,EA is a vulture that everone thinks is important to have but really does nothing.

[Luke]

[QUOTE=aa]Hardcore Sony fans did care about the PS2 playing DVDs and bought the console at the end of 2000, but most people did not buy the console at that time. Rather the sales for the PS2 steadily increased in 2001 and dramatically increased in 2002, and this was due both to the release of Grand Theft Auto 3 in late 2001 and the release of many anticipated sequels of popular PS1 games in the year 2002 [/QUOTE]Well, you're partly correct. If you recall, there was a MAJOR shortage of PS2's available in 2000. So for the sales to pick up in 2001 and 2002 only makes sense since it was probably the most anticipated system of our time. As a matter of fact, a lot of people ending up buying Dreamcast's instead due to the shortage and Sega was able to extend their life expentency that much longer. I think they even dropped the price of the DC's in light of this.

Grand Theft Auto 3 was a major PS2 seller. You're absolutely right about that. But Sega discontinued the Dreamcast in March of 2001. So they were already on their way out by that time (October 2001).

[aa]

EA was not such a major third-party developer in the Dreamcast days as it was in the PS2 era. More people bought Gran Turismo 2 in 2000 than Need for Speed porshe  (porsche?) 2000 , and although EA has to be taken into account due to the amount of games it produced for the PS1, the Nintendo 64 still did fine without EA. In 2000 EA was as major a developer as Capcom or Konami was back then, so the point is still the same: it was the lack of third-party support which helped to kill the Dreamcast in 2001. Moreover, people who bought the PS2 in 2006 had way different reasons and motives than those who decided to buy it in 2000. Those who bought it in 2000 were mainly hardcore gamers or sony fans while those who bought it as late as 2006 were casual gamers or those people who decided to take advantage of the PS2's cheaper price. The comparison of those people who bought the PS2 in 2000 with those who bought it in 2006 is thus simply irrelevant. There was also the crazy hype for the PS2 back in 2000 but as i said those who believed in it and bought it were still just the hardcore gamers, while the mainstream was satisfied enough with the games for the PS1 and the Nintendo 64. The poor reputation of Sega did help to lessen the sales for the Dreamcast at the time, but again this applied only to those hardcore gamers who knew enough about Sega to criticize it so badly not to even consider the superior graphics and gameplay of the Dreamcast. Because the Saturn was so unsuccessful the reputation of Sega would not even be so well known by most casual gamers in 2000, and did Sega really have such a bad reputation in 2000? I mean the Saturn was inferior to the PS1, but this is like comparing the Gamecube to the PS2 and recognizing that the former was simply a worse console. Did this however affect the popularity of the Wii when it came out? Would a casual gamer even consider the reputation of Sega when he saw the awesome graphics of the Dreamcast and noticed the affordable price tag that came with it? The fact was, not enough people noticed these two aspects of the Dreamcast, and this has to be blamed on Sega's inablility to launch as brilliant a marketing campaign as Sony had. But can this honestly be blamed? Sony had far more advantages in the aspect of marketing than Sega did back then, and it must be admitted that a good marketing campaign costs a good deal of money. Sony had this money in buckets, while Sega would have had to raise the initial price of the Dreamcas t by a good deal ($50 to $100) merely to match the marketing prowess of the PS2. And because the Dreamcast did not come along with a DVD player built-in, a casual gamer then would probably go along with the PS2 if the Dreamcast was priced as the same as the PS2. Furthermore, casual gamers did not care about Sega's past failures at all if it went further back than the Saturn, I mean how many gamers would have even heard of the infamous Sega 32X back in 2000? And by the way the Dreamcast was not too little too late but more like too little too early, and yet too little sounds unfair as Sega had way better launch titles for the Dreamcast than Sony had with the PS2 at launch. We praise the PS2's massive game library now but not many people realize just how mediocre it was back in 2000, and even when a good game like Ico was released in 2001 almost no one took note of it. So the question of "too little" has little relevance with the mainstream sometimes. Rather it was more of the brilliant marketing than game quality. Thus the Dreamcast would be more appropriately described as: too quiet, and too early. The Dreamcast also never killed the Nintendo 64: the N64 was having a brilliant year in 2000 after a rise in sales in 1999 with the release of Super Smash Bros. and the drop in cartridge prices back in late 1998. Thus from 1999 onwards more people had more reason to buy the N64 who had previously been repelled by the expensive cartridge prices for the system. The N64 only died in late 2001 when people got bored with Pokemon Stadium 2, Conker's Bad Fur Day and Mario Party 2. Even though Sega Net may have been released late in its lifespan, the online service was still a revolutionary feature in the console market, and the PS2 had nothing like it back in 2000. The fact was that the mainstream simply did not care about online in consoles back then. Look at the Xbox Live released in 2003, most people who had bought the Xbox bought it more for its games than for the online service.

[Luke]

[QUOTE=aa]EA was not such a major third-party developer in the Dreamcast days as it was in the PS2 era. More people bought Gran Turismo 2 in 2000 than Need for Speed porshe  (porsche?) 2000 , and although EA has to be taken into account due to the amount of games it produced for the PS1, the Nintendo 64 still did fine without EA.
[/QUOTE]Wow, what are you talking about? EA put out a lot of games for the Nintendo 64!