From the many failed gaming systems, the Dreamcast is easily the most celebrated today, it, to this day, has a dedicated fanbase with members so hardcore one of them probably hates me know for calling it a failed system, sorry!

While it was only available for a few years and left as quickly as it came it left a lasting impression. Released in 9.9.99, it had one of the strongest and most succesful launches in history , Sonic Adventures 1 & 2 are usually considered to be the only good 3D Sonic games, Soul Calibur was the first game to show that home consoles had surpassed the arcades and its considered to be one of the greatest fighting games of all time; the Dreamcast was also the first system to succesfully implement online play with games like Phantast Star Online, Chu! Chu! Rocket and Daytona USA.

While originally very succesful, sadly, the system came down in sales rather quickly, the poor reputation Sega build during the Saturn days as well as the looming launches of the PlayStation 2, the Nintendo Game Cube and Microsoft's Xbox gave it a short life, and after dissapointing sales Sega officially discontinued the system on March 31st 2001 ending their bussiness on the hardware department.

Dreamcast story is sad, but for another time, this time its all about sales, right here we have a mega collection of hardware and software sales of the Dreamcast in the US and Japan, first off the US.

The data right here is from 2004, as from NPD, so pretty trustworthy, anywho the complete software sales of the Dreamcast in the US.

Now onto Japan, as said before the Dreamcast was discontinued in 2001, that's 3 years before Media Create started sales tracking, so only Famitsu numbers are availabe, according to them, the Dreamcast sold 647.984 units in Japan from its late 1998 launch until the week ending on February 11, 2002. That's the last week of tracking of the Dreamcast I could find, no breakdown SKU table, sorry.

The Dreamcast got a buttload of games released in Japan, way more than in the US actually, this information comes from a book called World Of Dreamcast - Software & Peripheral Equipment Perfect Catalog which was published on September 2001, only in Japan, the LTD, publisher and title of the game comes from this book, the release date is from gamefaq's game database and FW data is from VGC.

:T

Nice list! The Dreamcast did very well, despite being discontinued...

I need to find a cheap second one quickly.. I think my dreamcast is dying.. :(

bestest consoles ever

It's so frustrating to watch people praise this console because back then, in the summer of 2001, I had one and I worshiped it BUT NO ONE ELSE DID. Every magazine, every gamer I knew... every website... it was all PS2, PS2, PS2. No one gave a shit about Dreamcast and it died a lonesome death right before my eyes.

Had people felt the way they feel now about it, the console, and company would have survived and we'd all be playing brand new Sega consoles right now.

So what was it that made this console flop anyways? Sonic was a system seller on the Genesis but after that it seems like SEGA had lost their brand power. Sad really.

Seaman. Lol.

I never owned a Dreamcast at the time, but I bought one a few years later and went back to play some games. Then I emulated some more stuff I missed later on.

It's pretty much the definition of a cult console. It had some fantastic games, and certainly a taste for every genre in there, but the software library just could not compete with the two juggernauts at the time (PS1 & PS2).

I feel it absolutely deserves the cult following it has gotten, but definitely isn't "best console ever" or anything like that.

I suspect it's heading the direction the WiiU is now, too. Lots of high-quality games which will be viewed as classics in the future, but without the software width of its competitors to make it a true classic.

Anyway, thanks for the data sharing here. Any sales data is fun to read.

Wait, the Dreamcast only sold 650k LT in Japan? That's shocking to me, especially considering how unusually popular the Saturn was over there.

I wonder what the lifetime sales would've been if they didn't discontinue it.

That's what Famitsu says, other sources say the Dreamcast was at 1m in Japan at the time it was at 2m in the US, so I'm not sure.

Supposedly most Sega/Saturn fans were pissed off at Sega for killing the Saturn so quickly, so they didn't supported the Dreamcast, that's what I've read about, not sure if its true.