ZyroXZ2 said:
| Jon-Erich said:
I don't think the Dreamcast was a disaster. As I said in other posts, Sega Saturn killed Sega's hardware business, not Dreamcast. It was too late for Dreamcast to do anything about. In fact, Sega had actually planned to leave the hardware business after the Dreamcast. The only reason Dreamcast saw the light of day at all was so Sega could restore it's reputation amongst consumers, which given that they were such a brand-driven company back then, it was actually a smart move.
Also, I wouldn't necessarily call Wii U a disaster. Unless it starts doing as badly as the Sega Saturn (with both sales and finances), then it's more like an underperforming console. It's true that Virtual Boy was a disaster, but that was a disaster that wasn't too much of a financial burden and since it was seen as being less important than the Game Boy or N64, it could be killed of and buried rather quickly.
That being said, hell yeah I would buy the next Nintendo console. Wii U without a doubt has the single best software lineup of any 8th gen consoles far and given what's coming out next year, it looks like it'll be that way for some time. If this is what an underperforming Nintendo console will give us, then I would rather them not have the #1 console anymore.
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I can agree that the Sega Saturn was the first nail in the coffin, but the Dreamcast shouldn't have seen the light of day, not in that situation. It was too big of a risk to try and bank on that last system being any sort of savior (which I think is what they were hoping; no company releases a system for the sake of "consumers" knowing it will put them nearly out of business).
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If Sega were an American company (and I mean a real American company, not a company founded by Americans somewhere else), they probably would have gotten out of the hardware business after the Saturn. The Japanese tend to have a sense of corporate honor, meaning that when a company does as bad as Sega did, they feel the need to save face. If they were going to leave the hardware business, then it was going to be on a high note. While Sega wasn't expecting Dreamcast to keep them in the hardware business for the long term future, they were hoping that they might actually make some actual money from it. While Sega never profited from Dreamcast, they certainly did go out on a high note. Dreamcast owners still regard the console as one of the best ever, and unlike the situation with the Saturn where Sega's whole fanbase and the industry in general were pissed of at them, Dreamcast died with the total opposite reaction.
I think Dreamcast actual helped improve Sega's brand amongst consumers. While this iis totally meaningless nowadays since Sega is no longer a brand-diven company thanks to Sammy, it certainly helped them out in the early 2000's. Think of it this way. How many people will honestly buy a game made by Atari because Atari made it? Almost nobody. This is because Atari gave nobody anything to remember about them when they left the hardware business for good. They just left and became irrelevent no matter how good or bad their games were.
