/thread

Well, online gaming was pretty much new back then and quite a rarity, so I'm sure enough people were happy enough that online gaming even EXISTED.

You are sidestepping being wrong by trying to word around the fact, yet its clear you still do not understand it at all.

so let me make it nice and clear to you.

A Sega-Net subscription was NOT REQUIRED to play online, if you already had dialup internet with another company.
When the console died, some games could still be played online via P2P, others that relied on dedicated servers stopped working.
Phantasy Star Online version 2 charged a $10/month fee to cover the cost of keeping their servers running, the game was a MMO.

For the Dreamcasts active life, you DID NOT need to subscribe to Sega-Net to play online, Sega-Net was an optional, ISP service intended to improve gameplay over the internet, but was optional, all games were free to play online if you already had an ISP to use, games like Phantasy Star Online version 2 only started charging monthly after all other game servers had been shut down because the Dreamcast had been killed off.

SegaNet only existed because Sega had already setup the services for the Japanese NetLink that used a centralized dialup system for online play on the Sega Saturn, the US version basically called the person you wanted to play with, directly by their landline phone number, since Sega already had the infrastructure in place in Japan for a centralized service, they took that offline and repurposed it for the Dreamcast, and set up a similar system in the US and Germany for US and European players.

The biggest change to the netlink infrastructure was changing the access and authentication servers to dialup relays, so people could use the servers that were running the games dedicated servers on, as the actual ISP too, to reduce ping and improve overall speed of net play.

SEGANET FOR DREAMCAST WAS AN ISP, PSN/XBL IS NOT
Your point with this thread was to draw comparisons between SegaNet and PSN/XBL, they are completely different.

So, was it really a shady deal by Sega? NO, have you shown yourself to have completely misunderstood what SegaNet is?, Yes, completely.

Am i sure of this? yes, very much so, I bought a dreamcast at launch and was still playing it long after the consoles demise, I was even paying the $10 monthly fee for PSOv2 when everyone else had abandoned the console.

I suppose it is not a surprise that Sega exited the console market with the Dreamcast...

SegaNet was a  sega branded ISP service, it had nothing to do with playing games online with the Dreamcast, the price was average at the time and it was only dialup.

Actual online play was free and did not rely on any account system (except for games that had their own accounts).

You guys should either learn to read or do proper research before getting all outraged over something, it would help.

As others pointed out, if you already had your own ISP you were free to use that.

The bigger outcry was in Europe where you had to use dream arena (via BT in the UK) and pay per minute for your connection in the first year even if you had your own ISP already.

Luckily you were allowed to use your own ISP eventually. But yeah, this was all before broadband hsf any traction and the likes of AOL charged monthly fees as well as for all your minutes.

Xbox Live etc bear no resemblance to this at all.

NFL 2k1 online used to be amazing, 4 (same room) vs. 4 (global) shit was epic.

After Sega killed the ISP, they did start charging for online play. You needed to pay $10 a month for an account for almost every game except PSO v2 which had its own monthly fee.

Dude what are you talking about. Dreamcast in 2 years built the greatest library there ever was. Which is even more impressive because it was all done by Sega themselves. They've literally made a classic in every genre. Even to this day I'm amazed by the console because I keep finding hidden gems. Lately found the unreleased Propeller Arena which was made by the god developer Yu Suzuki.

Ever since the DC and PS2 I've been missing that simple old skool fun of arcade styled games and single players games that weren't infested with repetitious gimmicks. Now it's all cinematic with publishers inventing new words to bombard us with their blockbuster games. 2014 was a bad year, games either missed SP (Titanfall), followed the same old template (Assassins Creed, Watch Dogs), shipped broken or were empty of content (Destiny). I've also burned out on the pseudo 8 bit pixel craze of indie devs. The Order got shit on but ironically it was the game that reminded me of the older times the most being a concise SP game only.

I'll answer the question with another question: What's a 'Dreamcast'?

Yeah. I think we all know what happened with Dreamcast.