What did Sega get blackmailed for?

Sega were bleeding financially, but it was the sales that were the tipping point. Sales of the Dreamcast dropped so massively when PS2 was released that the system simply did not sell. It even went so far that they had campaigns where they almost gave the system away. I still think they could have maintained sales at a decent level for a few years.

I swear it hurts my heart every time the sales discussion comes up about the Dreamcast....and how it's deemed a failure. I still have mines in mint condition with 5 controllers, 5 VMU's, and 27 games. All still in mint. I wish Sega would come back to the console race. :(

the dreamcast succeeded. sega failed.

Sega killed the Dreamcast

it actually did fail because of sales

but also mismanagement from Sega. the reality is that Sega was already in poor financial standing PRIOR to the Dreamcast. essentially what they did was put a bunch of money hoping to smash it out of the park with Dreamcast, gambling their company (at least in terms of the future hardware capability)

they spent a lot of money in developing the Dreamcast, to get it out before competitors that generation. the Shenmue titles (especially 1) were infamously expensive too

if you look at their sales, the sales don't justify the kind of risk and investment Sega took. especially in terms of Shenmue (although possibly that can partially be attributed to a short system duratin)

bear in mind though Sega had essentially failed with the Saturn when looking at sales and its doubtful they made much of any money in that generation, even if the Saturn Japanese sales were much stronger than the West

the only thing its failure can be truly blamed on IS sales. Sega's expectations must have been that the device was going to pick off and fly and sell at Playstation like levels based on what the put into the system/Shenmue

and we all know the Dreamcast sold okay for its first year but its literally plummeted as soon as the Playstation 2 arrived which indicates sales were the issue. that was before there was even strong talk of the Dreamcast being discontinued 

Sega already was destined to fail based on their decisions the last few generations. just flipping to new hardware whenever they weren't getting the sales they wanted and then not properly developing a good software library for said new hardware expansions (Sega CD, 32x, Saturn, etc.)

its not surprise that they could not keep ahead of all of their previous mistakes

what would have been quite interesting is if Sega had bundled their system with a DVD player and went down a route like that (as opposed to the weird Windows build). based on the PS2 people were quite excite to advance in getting a multi-media gaming system at the time

this.

Sega was grasping at straws with the Dreamcast, hoping for a miracle. they had exhausted their bank with all of those failed projects. and their word of mouth (in terms of hardware) was extremely weak in the West by the time of the Dreamcast because of so many devices that they had created and not significantly enough supported

I was a SEGA fan. I wish what you say would have been the case. The thing went on for years even worse than the Wii U while the PS1 got FF7, metal gear solid, silent hill, resident evil 2, tomb raider 2. What Japan got is mostly irrelevant as in the west it was a wasteland.

Sorry, but there wasnt any comparison. The Saturn was crushed not only by itself but by the competition.

I hate to say it but I disagree. Saturn had lots of great games, and it had some 3rd party support. I remember playing Tomb Raider, Toshinden, Resident Evil, and some others. It actually had lots of 3rd party support in Japan. Those droughts were worse because of no localization. We missed out on Symphony of the Night, Grandia,  DOA, and Sakura Wars. If we had access to these games, I think that Saturn could have been something more. I still wish that Saturn got Lunar Silver Star Story Complete.

It had a good sports library. And a good fighting game library.
The problem was that it barely had any mainstream genres. Croc is the only 3D platformer worth mentioning, when it was a 3D platformer's world. How does that even happen?
And all of its good games were mostly nice, quirky and weird like Nights. So you really had to be deep into gaming in order to appreciate it's library. It's library really was a disaster if you weren't into sports, fighting games, imported shmups and RPG's, or a dedicated gaming gem digger.