I've been into gaming since atari. I've been selling games for the past 15 years, (YES) my hobbie became a job. Its just my view from the inside on why the Dreamcast didn't take of the way it was suppose to. Till this day even the big media refuses to say for fear that people will do it with every system. Copied games. Titles werent flying of the shelves cause the most of the titles could be copied. Sega was loosing a ton of cash cause of this. (so was the business I worked for). Phantasy Star RULED!!! I now see this hapening with the Xbox 360. (shivers)... Buy legit, Play legit, Stay legit.

HappySqurriel said: It wasn't "Too Close" to the Sega Saturn because the Saturn was released in 1994 and the Dreamcast was released in 1999; Sega released at the standard 5 year mark. The Dreamcast failed because the Sega Saturn was such a massive disaster that Sega's reputation was destroyed in the general gaming public. With the Saturn, Sega released an amazingly expensive console that was difficult to develop for because they had a belief that their fans would pay for anything regardless of whether it had games for it or not; they even had a surprise launch to ensure that they had no games. The Saturn sold at a similar rate to the Playstation (which is a similar rate to how the PS3 is selling) and as soon as the Playstation started to take the lead third parties abandoned the Saturn in favour of the Playstation because of the abuse they faced from Sega; by the time the N64 launched in 1996 the Saturn was essentially dead and all upcomming projects had been transfered to the Playstation. For 2 1/2 years the Saturn sat on the market with a constant game drought that made the N64's worst droughts seem like a mild thirst. Gamers who spent $500 on the Saturn swore never to buy another Sega product again and most stuck with that promise ...

 What I put in bold and underlined from HappySqurriel is why Sega failed miserably.

It simple. Its because sony had turned everyone into mindless playstation drones at this point and all thery wanted was the playstation 2 with most of them knowing next to nothing about it and this despite the fact that the ps2 had possibly the worst launch line up ever.

Its a real shame and it still brings tears to my eyes as IMHO the dreamcast was and still is the most underated console ever.

Piracy didnt kill the DC, it was already dying at that point, I know alot more people that picked up a DC after it was hacked than did before.

I would agree with alot of points raised here, sega's lack of money of course. The other things i remember from back then was the fact that the PS2 was imminent and could play DVDs which was a HUGE selling point, I was proud to be one of the first people to import a DC and the number of people that asked if it played DVDs and then frowned when i said no used to make my blood boil!. Even after showing them games like Soul Calibur, Crazy Taxi, Jet Set Radio and Space Channel 5, they were still happy to hold out for the PS2.

The other thing was sony in their usual arrogance were pushing that the PS2 would use broadband and there were rumours it would have a web browser included too, at this point in time BB was in its infancy here in the UK and the whole concept of a console using it was very exciting. Shame sony seemed to forget all about that after the PS2 launch.

There was also the same 'problem' that sega also had with the saturn in comparison to sony with the PS brand, they couldnt produce the machine at a huge loss, this was the main killer of the saturn in my opinion and had a knock on effect on the DC.

I think IF sega had included the ability to play DVD and had promoted the fact that it used online, had a browser and was just as able to use broadband as the PS2, they would have done alot better, as far as console launches go and the availablility of great games from day one, the Dreamcast was (and still is) an absolute mile infront of every console in history.

well then I raise my glass (or cup of coffee) to the Dreamcast. I console that died way too young. Why God why???? He was too beautiful for this world!!

Well I think I'll go play some Bangai-o (one of my favorite DC games).

Ill start with the "fact" that Sega consoles die fast. They did, but not because it was something that Sega wanted to do. They have always been "number two", meaning that they have needed to shift their resourses and support quickly to the next gen to gain some ground. Any 100M+ selling Sega console would have seen as long support as PSX or NES.

Those videos about Dreamcast were good, but a little shallow. I don't think that they went far enough in the past to see where it all started.
There was nothing wrong in the Dreamcast itself, it was nearly perfect as a gaming console, reasons that led into it's fail happened before DC:s release and i would pick up 3 things that had the most effect to it's failure.
PS2, it was finally Dreamcasts deathblow with its DVD drive, CPU:s higher clockcycles and clever marketing (although, Dreamcast was gamers choice from those two).
Piracy, the thing that made PSX so popular, hurt DC badly because of installbase was too small to support developers along the piracy.
32X and Saturn, i see this as the main reason for Sega to lose its established fanbase, at that time it was bigger than ever. 32X was killed to help the Saturn gain ground and developer support and this really pissed off the fans. Eventually there were big overlap between Saturn and PSX owners, propably pretty much everyone who had Saturn had PSX eventually and this makes changing the hardware a lot easier.

Sadly Dreamcast died, i would change Sony and M$ to Sega and Atari at any day. The industry would be better than it is today.
But as its name tells you, it was the beginning of the end, Dreamcast sounds like something with similar background like Final Fantasy.

why it failled ???

==> sony hype killed her

this console was good,
SoulCalibur owned all the fighting games released on console
SC succeed to enter in the top5 of the best rated games (doesn't it ?)
Dc was released before, price was ok, and games were great.

BUT

Sony succeed to make the gamers think :
"hey, PS2 WILL be so good we have to buy it"
"the DC is nothing compared to the PS2 EMOTION ENGINE"

so people didnt buy the DC and decided to wait for the PS2 ...
fews months after her release, the PS2 catch the DC worldiwde and it was over.

Hype is everything ... when the price is not too high ...

oups, PS3 cost 600$, Game Over ...

I'd like to point out a factor that hasn't been pointed out. Another reason the Dreamcast failed was because the library of games for both the Playstation and N64 were so strong. People playing on these systems were still having a great time despite the outdated hardware. They were perfectly willing to wait for either the PS2 and Gamecube (less so) to come out before investing in a new system.

leo-j said: HappySqurriel said: leo-j said: mikey said: OMG! The japanese ladie said that japanese people like good graphics!! The first video resembles the wii, some how....it outsells ps1 first start sales...then dies out... Ummm ... The Dreamcast on a Week to Week basis was pretty steadily outsold by the Playstation ... Much like how the PS3 and XBox 360 are pretty steadily outsold by the PS2. The fact of the matter is that in (pretty much) every region around the world the Wii sold more in 6 months than the Dreamcast did in its lifetime. Even sarcastically comparing the Wii to the Dreamcast is only a demonstration of how little understanding of the market you have. Ummm Im being sarcastic.

 He said "Even sarcastically comparing the Wii to the Dreamcast is only a demonstration of how little understanding of the market you have."  So he means even if you're being sarcastic...you've got your ideas wrong.

Takashii said: HappySqurriel said: It wasn't "Too Close" to the Sega Saturn because the Saturn was released in 1994 and the Dreamcast was released in 1999; Sega released at the standard 5 year mark. The Dreamcast failed because the Sega Saturn was such a massive disaster that Sega's reputation was destroyed in the general gaming public. With the Saturn, Sega released an amazingly expensive console that was difficult to develop for because they had a belief that their fans would pay for anything regardless of whether it had games for it or not; they even had a surprise launch to ensure that they had no games. The Saturn sold at a similar rate to the Playstation (which is a similar rate to how the PS3 is selling) and as soon as the Playstation started to take the lead third parties abandoned the Saturn in favour of the Playstation because of the abuse they faced from Sega; by the time the N64 launched in 1996 the Saturn was essentially dead and all upcomming projects had been transfered to the Playstation. For 2 1/2 years the Saturn sat on the market with a constant game drought that made the N64's worst droughts seem like a mild thirst. Gamers who spent $500 on the Saturn swore never to buy another Sega product again and most stuck with that promise ...    What I put in bold and underlined from HappySqurriel is why Sega failed miserably.

Then why did the Dreamcast sell almost the same as the Saturn in half the time. The Dreamcast failed because Sega didn't have the deep pockets like Sony and M$ and it didn't cater to the casual gaming crowd the way Sony did with the PSX and PS2.