It was totally fucked in all five senses

SEGA's past mistakes with decisions like killing of the Saturn is what pretty much led the Dreamcast to an inevitable failure.

Piracy killed it.

Just to correct you, the Wii U is making a profit. Unlike what the Dreamcast did. So in a way, you can't really say it's doing worse.

I'm personally under the belief that the DC would've outsold the GC if Sega had supported it for the whole gen.

It just wasn't possible due to Sega bleeding money before & during DC release.

It is what it is. At least we got a great console out of it.

I played hundreds of hours on dial up. I had a blast. It wasn't perfect but was playable most of the time and I live a rural area. Quake 3 Arena was the one I played the most.

The most missed point from pulling the plug on the Dreamcast was the implosion of the arcades and how rapidly revenue from that sector dried up.

The Utopia boot disc also saw software sales plummet.

People believing the PS2 hype/lies from Sony - Graphics comparable to Toy Story etc. The jump in visual quality from the PS1/Saturn/N64 to the Dreamcast was incredible, It was the biggest generation jump we've ever seen. Couple that with some of the best games ever made, and it really is a terrible, almost inexplicable shame that the Dreamcast failed.

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.