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Poor Sega just didn't get the timing right.
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2024
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This is a really odd way of putting it seeing as the Dreamcast came out before the PS2 and was discontinued before the other 2 even came out.
They're actually all considered 6th gen consoles. There's only a 3 year gap between the Dreamcast and the Xbox.
Dreamcast was 98
PS2 was 2000
GameCube and Xbox were both 01, the year Dreamcast was discontinued.
Dreamcast could have been a wild success, probably would have been, too. The major issue was that the Playstation was still totally dominating the market. 98 and 99 were both ridiculously strong years for PSX title releases. Then the PS2 released and totally overshadowed it. Sega just couldn't keep up... Nobody could. Not until the market kinda leveled out in 05-06.
Yeah I understand they were all 6th gen. My point was just that it doesn't really make sense to blame the Dreamcast failure on its timing. Dates also matter:
Late 98 was release in Japan
Late 99 was release worldwide
Early 2000 was PS2 in Japan
Late 2000 was PS2 worldwide
Early 2001 Dreamcast was killed
Late 2001/Early 2002 Gamecube and Xbox
The meme makes it look like the Dreamcast popped up late, but timing was not the reason for it's demise at all. PlayStation dominating the market, as you mentioned, was probably the biggest one. People knew the PS2 was around the corner and the Dreamcast had barely been out in the EU by the time the PS2 was strutting it's stuff on the Japanese market.
Don't forget DVD playback. Most people by the year 2000 still only had VHS. DVD players were prohibitively expensive at the time so a lot of people were holding out. PS2 had DVD and cost about half the price of dedicated players. I know a lot of homes bought them purely as a movie machine.
I bet if Dreamcast had DVD playback the history of the Dreamcast would've been very different.
Absolutely, getting a PS2 was a game changer for me. DVD playback AND backward compatability. You had PS2, PSX, CD, and DVD all in one. I dumped my VCR shortly after getting it and mothballed my PSX. My 5 disc stereo collected dust until I sold it. Rigged it to my 5.1 speaker system to run on the same line as my computer. Between the PS2 and a properly equipped gaming PC, my bedroom was practically a movie theater, albeit with a tiny ass 22" crt.
I thought so too at first, but it sort of released in a window between the previous gen and these. They marketed it as "next gen" like they were beating the newer gen to market, but it was just terrible timing.
If they had released later it would have been worse. Sega's downfall was the Saturn which was just garbage compared to the N64 and PS1. Dreamcast was their last ditch effort to release a truly next-gen system before the big boys rocked up with all their cash.
Yeah, I'm of the opinion the Saturn was the real problem. It was not a bad step forward compared to the Megadrive, but compared to the PS1 it was nowhere near as good.
Dreamcast was a great console. It was really ahead of it's time with a bunch of things, the VMUs, the internet connectivity, the range of peripherals and keyboard/mouse integration. It was the first console I ever got relatively near release and never regretted it.
That's the best time to market. They simply didn't have the big IP that Nintendo and Sony had been marketing at the time. Sega at that time led with Sonic - as they always do - and then a few properties that were really fun and original, but required an expensive console to even try and get aquatinted with.
This is not even bringing up the prior hardware failures they had launched. They just miscalculated on the popularity of Sonic globally. It's not enough to get people with consoles that are working just fine and still have years of games to come to switch.
I don't remember what Sonic game came out for the DC. I'm sure they ran ads, but the DC game that I remember above all is Ecco the Dolphin. Never got to play the game.
Yep. That was a property from the Master System and Game Gear that got a 3D revamp for DC, but don't think it was really very popular to begin with, so naturally wasn't a huge selling point.