| Shadow1980 said: Sega was already in serious trouble after they bungled the Saturn. While the Dreamcast did better than the Saturn overall, it wasn't doing them any favors itself, really. In Japan the DC actually sold less than half as many units as the Saturn. In the U.S., the DC had a strong start, selling about 1.48M from its 9/9/99 launch to the end of 1999. But in 2000 it went downhill quickly. Just look at how the Dreamcast compares to other consoles in the 1999-2000 period:
The Dreamcast sold only about 1.28M units in all of 2000, meaning it was actually down YoY by about 200k units despite having an entire year vs. just under 4 months for 1999. Meanwhile, the PS1 sold 5.84M and the N64 sold 3.54M. The DC was struggling to compete with systems released several years earlier. The PS2 was still months away. And when the PS2 came out, it didn't actually have a huge impact on the DC's sales. Overall, the DC sold about 1.25M units in 2001, only 30k fewer than in the previous year. So, there was high initial interest in the Dreamcast, but after that it struggled. Even if it hadn't been discontinued prematurely it would have still ended up a distant fourth place in the sixth-gen runnings. |
Thank you!! So one gets it. The Dreamcast was not selling 'fine' at the time. 1.25 million units in an entire year in the US is not good.
