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Nuvendil on 10 July 2017
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Ganoncrotch said:
Nuvendil said:

Being first doesn't always equate to being the most influential in am area.  As I said in the very next sentence, online gaming was a novelty type concept on consoles, not much used or talked about except in a small handful of games.  And the Dreamcast wasn't the first attempt either.  The Famicom modem, the Sega Net Work System, the Sega Channel, the Xband, the Sega Net Link, the Apple Pippin, the N64DD, all these were attempts dating back to the 3rd Gen to bring online gaming of some form to consoles.  And all failed, all forgotten, all merely novel ideas.  It was the Xbox that changed that, that made online gaming a necessity.  The clearist indicator is the behavior of the market.  The Dreamcast launched before the GC or PS2 with its online functionality, yet neither of those two competitors bothered to have online functionality at launch.   The Xbox comes along with its online functionality and the games that take advantage of it and very shortly afterwards both competitors are playing catch up to them in that area and the next generation comes along and all consoles have built in online functionality.  

All of the consoles you mention here require addons to give the console functionality, the Dreamcast was the first console built with the modem installed out of the box as I said.

As for not being the first but most influential? No, that like others said here, the X360 was the machine which bought online play to the mainstream gamer, not the original console, which didn't even have online for the first year of availability.

To suggest that future consoles having features from previous generations means that those previous gens created the "norm" just doesn't work unless you are going for revisionist history, consoles use what is available technology at the time of their release to try to get the most out of the system. The original xbox just wasn't the first machine to be designed with online in mind, nor was it the most influencial in bringing it to the mainstream.

I am aware many were addons, that's not the point.  My point was that online gaming didn't start with Dreamcast in the console space.  It was the second one the have it out of the box, sure, but my point was that it was no different than those former atempts:  it was novel.  A neat trick.  A fun little distraction.  A minor addition.  It didn't propel sales, it didn't compell competitors to get on board, it did none of those things whatsoever.  The rest of its competitors launched with no thought to online.  Because it influenced nothing, drove nothing, compelled its compeition to do *nothing*.  

And it is not revisionism to use hindsight to judge a the reality of how thigns influenced others.  If I were doing what you said I was doing I would be arguing that the Pippin was the most influential.  Or the Dreamcas- oh wait that was your argument.  And no, consoles don't just include features because they can, the manufacturers have to feel there's money in the inclusion OR someone has to dare to attempt the untested.  The Xbox I list as more influential than the 360 because the whole reason MS went all in on the 360's online, the only reason Sony and Nintendo launched with standard online, was because the Xbox showed the potential in online functionality.  It was the first domino, the one that started that revolution.  By the end of gen 6, online gaming had gone from a throw away novelty to a standard feature everyone EXPECTED to see in future machines.  And none of that would have happened without Xbox Live and the original Xbox.  If MS had not done with the Xbox what they did, there's no telling how radically different the path forward would have been.  How many more failed attempts, throwaway novelties would have come and gone before someone dared to go all in and make it work?  I don't know, but the Xbox ignited a movement that changed console gaming.  360 followed up on it, but the Xbox undoubtedly, incontravertably was the first domino, the starting point.  

Also, another point:  The Dreamcast only included a dial-up modem, not a broadband connection option, making it...well kinda useless.  The Xbox shipped with an ethernet port for broadband connection, making it far more viable for gaming.