I soaked up the ps2 hype and bought a ps2 close to launch and was generally disappointed at least at the beginning. Shortly afterwards they were clearing out dreamcasts for something like £40 and unbelievably I bought something like 5 dc games for £10 from an offer by big ben interactive or something like that. I went for the offer 2 or 3 times to quickly get a large collection of games. Some of the games were absolutely amazing. Shenmue was like a trip to Japan I adored the game and many other games were brilliantly done. Still have 2 dreamcasts. One of my favourite consoles of all time.
To be honest I'm not totally sure what killed the Dreamcast's chances but the Sega brand was a little toxic at the time with the failure of mega cd, 32x and Saturn and Sony's Playstation brand seen as hugely successful thanks to ps1. DVD was the first time you could buy cheap convenient broadcast quality movies that you could play at home. Laservision didn't quite cut it. I think that gave the ps2 much stronger appeal and for me the ps2 was a more stylish appealing box. Whatever it's a real shame Sega are out of the hardware business.
