The numbers here are wrong. It took the Dreamcast three years, from November 1998 until at least November 2001, when Dreamcast consoles were still on store shelves despite being discontinued. This article is making the strange assumption that every system was sold between November 1999 (Dreamcast launched in September and October 1999 in US and Europe) and when the system was officially discontinued in March of 2001, whch simply isn't what happened.
daredevil.shark said:
DialgaMarine said:
Fusioncode said: IIRC the Dreamcast did very well in the US, Sega just wasn't stable enough financially to continue in the hardware business. |
Yeah, because M$ and EA killed them... -_-
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Sega 32x = Few games, poor market timing and divided the market.
Saturn = At 1994 E3 they said, we will not release saturn next year. We will release it one week later. Third party developers are in shock.
Dreamcast = Launched too early and had a bad reputation for previous systems poor support.
I dont like EA. But for dreamcast sega's mistakes drove EA from them.
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Really, what killed the 32x was the Saturn. The system did very well initially, but it just didn't have a future given that Saturn was launching the following year.
SEGA said this at E3 1995. Originally, the Saturn was to launch in September on "Saturnday", but it was revealed to be a ruse and SEGA revealed that the Saturn would be available imminently at select retailers. Though this did irritate third parties, it most famously provoked several retailers who were left out of the launch, in particular KB Toys, whom refused to carry SEGA products afterwards.
What killed third party support was the Saturn's very difficult to program hardware and poor sales. What killed EA's support for the Dreamcast was SEGA not giving EA a heads up regarding the discontinuation of the Saturn and the launch of the Dreamcast. EA actually offered to support the Dreamcast on the condition that EA sports become the only game in town when it comes to sports games on the system (or it may have just been football games, don't quite remember). In response SEGA launched the 2K sports series.