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Cerebralbore101 on 09 September 2017
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RolStoppable said:
Cerebralbore101 said:

So, I've never owned a Dreamcast but I've played a lot of games that originated on the system. I'm always looking at the history of game releases, and the Dreamcast just had an amazing two years of releases. It reminds me a lot of the Switch in so many ways. Like the Switch it was a successor to a failed console, it had a very good library, it was made by a small Japanese company, and it sold extremely well (nearly 10 million units in three years, while the GameCube struggled to reach 20 million in 5 years). Sega just ran out of money with the Dreamcast. 

There are hardly any parallels between the Dreamcast and Switch.

Also, selling nearly 10m units in three years is Wii U pace. Extrapolating the Dreamcast's sales to a five year stretch would make it finish behind the GC, so you made an absurd comparison.

 From launching November 27th 1998 in Japan to March 31st 2001 the Dreamcast had 2 years, four months, and four days on the Japanese market. From launching September 9th 1999 to March 31st 2001 it had one year, six months, and 22 days on the U.S. market. By comparison the GameCube had 5 years 2 months and 2 days from it's launch in Japan to the launch of the Wii in Japan. So we've basically got sales of 9 million units from around a 2 and a half year period (almost a full year of which was just sales in the East), vs 22 million units from a five year period. 

But yeah I take back the amazing sales comment. Now that I've sat down and done the math it looks like it would have ended around GC level sales, if it had a 5 year lifespan.