I believe we Dreamcast would be 2nd to PS2, would have upgraded to Dreamcast Revolution. The Revolution would be selling the best right now, and worldwide sales of Gizmondo would be reaching 50m. I think that is just what you want to hear, a.l.e.x.

Oh, and the Sonic Franchise would be doing much better.

The Dreamcast's worldwide sales were utter trash by the time Sega canned it. I believe it's last US Christmas, to which there was a massive pricedrop, only sold >300k systems. It would of still ended up in 4th place, with around 16.5~17.8m units w/w. It would of, however, weakened the PS2 and Xbox userbase by probably 2m units each.

Yes, the Dreamcast has sold 10 milion units but only afer Sega droped the price to extreme levels just to clear the remaining stock. And with what games could Sega take nubmer 2 position in console race? Jet Set Radio? Space Channel 5? Their bad copy of Gran Turismo? That boring-in-town-action-RPG Shenmue? Their bad Japan only RPG`s Shining Sh*t and Phantasy Star?  Japan only games that even Japan audience don`t want to buy like Sakura Wars or Let`s make series? Arcade games like Sega Rally? Virtua Cop?

No, the money is not a problem. Even after Sammy bought Sega we only see bad games from them and the only answer to the problem is that they have lost all the inspiration to make good games, so, no, there is not a chance that Sega could ever be number 2, not even a number 3.

P.S. Sorry for my bad English :( 

Well, when complete US numbers were still on the site, I tried to look after what went wrong with the DC and the answer is so obvious... No games!! No system sellers!! And there were never more than a "big" game a month, even during Holidays, so even when big games were released, there were no jump in HW sales... SEGA really screwed it up. They did the best job possible!

I think the assumption you have to make in a hypothetical debate like this is that certain conditions that lead the Dreamcast to fail were not present. The unfortunate thing is that these assumptions would cause a ripple effect through out the industry and would change the strategies of the companies that followed. Had Sega's out of the box online strategy been popular it is likely that in 2001 (2 years after the Dreamcast launched) Nintendo would have been far more interested in online gameplay with the Gamecube; if the Dreamcast had stronger third party support this would have come at the expense of support for another platform; and if the Dreamcast was performing well through 1999 Microsoft may have decided there was too much competition to even bother entering the market.

bush would never have been elected and peace would reign supreme...seriously who knows and who cares. let's stick to what's happening now...

What I wonder about is what would have happened if Microsoft had bought Sega and concentrated on the Dreamcast. With Sega's software and M$'s money that would have been a much bigger system than the DC and XBox combined. I assume that M$ would have still bought Bungie and everything else they did. Or what if M$ bought Sega early enough and created the DreamBox, and it came out about the same time as the PS2. With Sega's experience making consoles and M$ money, it would have been an even stronger system than the DC, and yet no doubt much cheaper to produce in the long run. It might have made Microsoft profitable the first time around, and successfully competed with PS2. It sure would have sold far better in Japan than the XBox. We might have had a 2 way race for 1st place.

And I think it hurted SEGA a lot and I think Fifa would have helped a lot in PAL territories.

I remember all people wondering and waiting for a PES (it was called at that time ISS) or a FIFA with next-gen graphics... Even

All PAL gamers were waiting for that soccer game that never came out... we only had crappy games from RAGE and SEGA (I'm not talking about Virtua Striker who did great for what it is...

 Well, if Microsoft just gave the money to SEGA, the DC (or the XBOX) would still have bombed...

SEGA is great at making arcade games, and they continue to be the best at doing that.

Personally, the last great non-arcade games from SEGA that I played are Skies Of Arcadia, Jet Set Radio and Shenmue.

Being kicked off the HW market was a natural move, and the best thing to happen to gaming industry since 80's collapse.