Certain reviewers should also take some of the blame for unfairly blasting new games like Heavenly Sword, Viking, Mirror's Edge, and Golden Axe Beast Rider.

Meh, I bought my share of Sega games this gen so far, and will be buying a few more soon. Im clear of this guilt =)

Oh, I just assumed it was abundantly clear that if bottom lines are dropping while revenues are soaring, it was because companies were over-investing in development. I'd be curious to see how you link that to financial conditions, though. I would just say that publishers are paying to create more content and more expensive content than the market is willing to support. Oversupplying in an attempt to compete with other publishers.

It would be great if there was a source which tracked how much companies spent in aggregate on video game hardware and software production.

Why should reviewers be blasting new IPs if they are meh.  Heavenly Sword, standard hack'n slash, nothing new was added, and in many peoples opinion a step back from God of War.

Some new IPs should get blasted, especially if they are emulating an already strongly represented genre.  If your games do not exceed the quality of existing games in a genre (new IP or not), don't expect a strong reception sales or review wise.

SEGA should serve as an object lesson for many companies these days, who are trying to do what SEGA did: bend over backwards for the elusive hardcore gamer by just piling on the awesomeness in more quantities than the market at large is willing to stomach.

Although SEGA had further financial problems, like the big disputes between Sega Japan and Sega of America, and their generally inability to be financially stable. Oddly enough, my love for SEGA developed only after they started working on Nintendo consoles (otherwise i would never have gotten to play many of their awesome works)

disolitude said: Ronster316 said: Well, i had a Sega megadrive and around 60 games for it a Sega saturn and close to 40 games for it. and a Sega dreamcast and over 60 games for it. I tried Sega, i really did. Its a shame that fantastic games like Shenmue and Jet set radio are now becoming distant memories First I jsut want to say that other than when I discovered videogames in 1989, Dreamcast was the funnest time I had with videogames. Almost every game I got for it was a blast... I am guilty in taking that for granted, because it hasnt been the same since. I think the true tragedy with the dreamcast is that some games just dissapeared without a trace. Atleast people still praise Shenmue and Jet set radio...but games like Headhunter, Gigawing 2, Cannon Spike, Toy Commander, Bangai-O...they almost dissapeared without history making any refference to them what so ever. For example Headhunter is easily as good as metal gear solid 2 if not better when it comes to gameplay variety, humor and story... but will it ever get the praise? Not even close... Ikaruga and Rez would be on the list too had we not seen Xbox live versions of those games.Ikaruga and Rez would be on the list too had we not seen Xbox live versions of those games.

A lot of great games for the Dreamcast were overlooked no doubt.

Such a shame that some of Segas best work came at a time when the "corporations" were overtaking this business.

Sega deserved better, its a pity that a high percentage of gamers neglected the Dreamcast.

@largedarryl,

Heavenly Sword, Viking, and Golden Axe Beast Rider were all exceptional games that brought plenty of new things to their genre or at least as many new things to their genre as all of the fps games that were released last year to 8 and 9 or higher review scores did and that only received such high scores because they were fps games while new ips that aren't in the shooter genre don't seem to get the scores they deserve since they aren't fps games. And as far as the more innovative fps games go, games like Dark Sector and Mirror's Edge, they also tend to not get the critical receptions they deserve. That is why fifteen years after first discovering his writings in Gamefan, I still consider Dave Halverson and co. in Play Magazine to still be the most responsible and least biased journalists in gaming. They shoot straight and gave all of the games I've mentioned here excellent reviews while to many game journalists if a game isn't a shooter, an rts, or an mmo, then it is an inferior game .

1st rule of marketing: don't blame the customer if he doesn't buy your product.

2nd rule of marketing: make a product he wants to buy.

3rd rule of marketing: make sure that he knows your product.

4th rule of marketing: make sure he knows that your product is the one he wants.

If you want to make to make money in theis business, you need to make products for customers and not pieces of art for video game reviewers.

This is something I meant to address in my first post, and I agree with you completely.

The "hardcore" gamer is a very loud minority.  I wonder how many gamers actually fit into that category.

Sega bent over backwards for the hardcore gamer with the dreamcast...but they also provided much more to the casual gamer then any other company at that time. Sega was bringing lots of their arcade ports over which are mostly casual games.

Games like:

House of the dead 2 with lightgun

Samba de amigo with maracas

Sega bass finshing with the fishing rod

Crazy Taxi, Virtua Tennis and many other arcade titles that are very easy to play even for the most casual gamer

Countless other mutliplayer titles and free mini games like Sega Swirl.

For the the timeframe of year and half Dreamcast was the best all around system ever created. All systems take 2-3 years to come in to their own, Dreamcast was there within 6 months.

The thing with the dreamcast that most people don't understand is that it sold relatively well. But piracy, PS2 with its DVD player and Sega bleeding money killed it. I agree that the article may be a little off in saying that gamers failed Sega because Dreamcast was supported...it jsut wasn't enough.