Any kinds of comments like this are ignoring a lot of context, not the least of which being the Dreamcast's price in its last year of life: $100 for most of 2001, then $50 for the holiday season. Even if you DID take inflation into account (which you shouldn't, given that average income has barely increased since 2001), I'm fairly certain the Dreamcast was still being sold for a much cheaper price than Wii U is now.

On top of that, Dreamcast was moderately successful in the West, and had a record breaking launch in the US (things slowed down in 2000, but in the end it managed decent numbers). It was a variety of factors, including money lost on the Saturn, death of the arcade scene, and the system's slow sales in Japan (which is kind of odd given the Saturn's success in Japan) that forced SEGA out o the console market. The rampant piracy of Dreamcast software due to the MIL-CD security breach didn't help matters either.

Exactly, Dreamcast sold quicker... in the beginning. The Dreamcast had record numbers in Japan the first year and a half and Dreamcast sold great in the west for a full year. And then PS2 came out in March in Japan and it stopped selling there. PS2 came out in October and November in the west and it stopped selling there. And in 2001 they announced they were discontiuing it and that caused sales to drop even more. Wii U on the other hand had a mediocre launch and a terrible first year. Dreamcast had a record breaking launch and a great first year in both Japan and the west. At this point Dreamcast was almost completly dead selling barely anything. And Wii U is still selling at a steady rate and is up YoY.

And also Dreamcast was sold at a loss and Sega was in finacial trouble. But even if it did last as long as lets say GameCube or Xbox, it wouldn't have sold as much because the sales 2001 and after were very bad.

So your basically telling someone who studied business and law in university that I have a woeful lack of understand of business models.? Yet you are comparing the Wii U to the dream cast. It's a different century, different company, different target audience, different profit margins, different financial health, etc etc. facts? Dream cast was discontinued, not due to Unprofitability, but due to the Unfeasibility of sega as a company. Nintendo make a hefty profit from software releases on the U. Sega's sw and hw combined equalled a massive loss. Therefore the U will sell a minimum of 20 million units and finish its life cycle with at least a small profit unlike sega who didn't have the capital to take the early losses of the dreamcast which would have eventually made a profit. Therefore, there is no comparison.

In laymen's terms, early in the product life cycle a company must invest massively in R&D and marketing. They then recoup their losses by reaching economies of scale in production and, most obviously, accumulation of sales. Because the dream cast never reached that phase, and the Wii U has and will continue to, it is basically ridiculous to compare them as products.

Now let's ask why you are confusing a product and a business model? I'm going to now make the safe assumption that you don't have an mba at 19.

I would also kindly like to request that you change your title as it is misleading. Beaten is past tense. However, as the Wii U is a current console, and the dream cast has been discontinued, this is misleading and probably not possible for the dream cast to have "beaten" the Wii U. 

It won't be a DreamCast. I think lifetime it'll sell 15-20 million (17.9mil by end of gen if Nintendo is still stubborn about the price). They won't win, they lost this gen. All they can do now is build consumer trust for their next system. They do that with continued support and impressive games.
The biggest mistakes which screwed them was not taking advantage of the 1yr head start, slow ass release of games (a little better now. But god, the first year was pathetic), and the Wii mentality ("oh casuals will love this cheap system too! Even if it'll be underpowered!")

If they fix that they should be fine next gen

they didn't eliminate Sony. Sony's lack of support and the decline in the market is ensuring it's the last handheld they will make. By that logic Sony and MS and eliminated Nintendo from the console market. Vita is likely to sell more lifetime than the Wii U. 

Please do some research on the situations on the respective companies before you make threads like this lawl

Sega failed because the dreamcast wasn't also a dvd player. The misstep cost the company.

Excellent post!

Why would we like it? If Nintendo went third party they wouldn't have any need to make games based on their 2nd and 3rd tier IPs. They would just make mario, zelda and pokemon games for profit. Look at sega, they don't bother with the majority of their IPs anymore.

A system with a built-in DVD drive would have been cost-prohibitive in November 1998, especially for a system with a $199 launch price tag (29000 yen in Japan).

Sony launched the PS2 with an expensive DVD drive in 2000, but the same strategy backfired with the Blu-ray drive in the PS3 in 2006.

The perception that the PS2 was going to be soooooo much better than the Dreamcast was a bigger part of what killed it. Sony touted Episode 1-level graphics and a bunch of other PR drivel. Had the Dreamcast launched head to head with the PS2 at $100 cheaper, history may have been different (Other factors like lack of EA support, Sega's financials, Sega's previous failures, etc. obviously also played a part.).