I worked my first job that entire summer of 99 to get a Dreamcast. I quit my job on 9.9.99. My mom said “dont you have to work?” What do you mean mom I got my Dreamcast, job done.
I wouldn't kill Shenmue, I'd simply just put it on the backburner until the dust settled on the Dreamcast's future. Greenlight the project after Dreamcast success is achieved.
Personally, I'd have left Shenmue to the whims of a 3rd party developer, even if it would've meant that it wouldn't necessarily be a Dreamcast (Katana) exclusive.
Oh man, I remember thinking "Dreamcast" was such a cool name at the time. Sounds like a mind bending interdimensial film. Maybe the coolest name of any console ever imo.
There's something about the Dreamcast atmosphere that felt so peaceful yet cool in it's own way. Katana just feels like your pandering to the aggressive 90's cool and I feel like it wouldn't hold up.
"Dreamcast" is the best name ever chosen for a console indeed. It feels like reaching a new dimension, something never seen before, and the ambience set by its intro help to add a lot to that. I can't understand why one could ever think about changing this.
Fully agree! I love the name I wasn’t sure at first but after owning it, playing it, it’s so fitting it’s perfect. It really is a dream machine! Even love the controller and VMU’s. Favourite console, even when compared to other modern consoles.
For me personally, the Dreamcast was never a failure! At the time it was discontinued it was still being heavily supported, with loads of great games coming out all the time! I was 100% invested & was fully supporting it when it was announced that it would be discontinued, and I remember being completely shocked with disbelief & confusion when the announcement was made. In my eyes, the system was still doing well & was an amazing experience, so I truly didn't understand why it was happening. For many of us, the Dreamcast was an amazing experience right up til the very end.
To This Day* I got one about 6 weeks ago (region free) and it’s probably my favourite console and I play it almost daily! The Dreamcast is still alive! Favourite Games on it that I own, so far: Hydro Thunder, Sega Extreme Sports (Gem), NHL 2K2, SILVER, MDK2, Dolphin Blue, Trick Style, Millennium Solider Expendable. I enjoy playing Rush2049 but it is unforgiving so looking to get Daytona USA for best car racing game.
I felt the same way at the time. My father and I both loved the Dreamcast and were shocked when it was discontinued. We weren't delusional about the Dreamcast was doing but we didn't think it was so bad that it needed to be cancelled.
@@jamesburchill7522 I disagree, it had enough bonus features (modem, 4 controller ports) and one of the best sets of dev teams in the industry to compete successfully and find a niche. Gamecube and xbox would have struggled without Sega giving their consoles a little variety. The rerelease of sonic adventure 2 outsold RE4 on the gamecube and 3 of the top 30 games on the console were Dreamcast rereleases!
In my humble opinion, to rescue the Dreamcast, we might need to revisit the paths that brought us the 32X, Sega Nomad, and CDX. As a Sega enthusiast, I adore their hardware to bits, but let's face it - those gadgets were about as in demand as a snowblower in the Sahara. Great video as always SLX
I mean, certainly, it could be argued that the Dreamcast wouldn't have needed saving if Sega's reputation wasn't tarnished by it's 3 prior major hardware releases. Maybe they'd have even been able to release Shenmue without burning the bank in the process.
@@kabbusses Not just Sega's reputation with consumers, but Sega's reputation with retailers was in the shitter too - after the Sega CD and 32X's failures and the Saturn's surprise launch, many large retailers simply refused to work with Sega from there on out.
My favorite sega system. Got it day one. Every game was available around here and I bought up as many as I could. My ps2 was just a glorified DVD player that first year so my attention stayed on the Dreamcast.
@@robert5235 Scarface: The World Is Yours is a masterpiece. I have both the PS2 version and the fan made remastered version on PC. If u want, I can tell u how to play the fan-made remaster, its so good
So there's a UA-camr who looked over sega's financial statements and the leaks and figured out that the Dreamcast was on track to be profitable if the arcade division had held out another year. Sega was financing Dreamcast losses with money from the arcade division until the break-even point and then in the final year or two of the dreamcast's life cycle they would have raked in a ton of money. But the arcade division collapsed before the Dreamcast could hit its profitable cycle
Highly unlikely tbh, the Dreamcast was infamously jailbroken and easy to play backups on, which were all over the internet on eDonkey and stuff even back in 2001. I know people actually made money selling Dreamcast burned CDs at the time. Dreamcasts stopped selling almost entirely once the PS2 landed and the Xbox was coming and that added another massive competitor to the arena. By the end i remember Dreamcasts in bargain bins because the stores couldn't sell them anymore, that was a major contrast with 1999 when it was hard to get one. So i fail to see where the profit would come from since they had sold all the Dreamcasts they were going to sell realistically and the software wasn't selling in high numbers either. For me personally it was FFX that landed the killing blow, that thing looked AMAZING on the trailers
@@stevesteve0521 you know they actually could have survived that. Not that it helped those resources really needed to go somewhere else but the game still sold pretty well and they probably only lost about 15 or 20 million on it which for a company of sega's size while bad wasn't anywhere near a deal breaker. The problem is the business model for consoles is to lose money for several years and then make a bunch of it at the very end but to do that you need a money maker to support you in the meantime. Sony's got their insurance business and Microsoft has the windows and office monopolies but Sega only had the arcades
It is a game that I asked for so many years yet thinking it would replace phantasy star online, I think something would be missing. I could have seen a Phantasy star 5 on saturn or on DS or 3DS were the budgets and time development weren't too harsh for Sega. They could have done that
It could still be done. Dragon Quest still does wonders, there's still demand for classic turn based JRPGs and sci-fi settings in them are scarce at best. I'd buy it full price
@@enigmaster84 I always thought so too, they could really have a team dedicated to PSO and another to turned base RPG (even if it is smaller) I think the advantage in this is to create characters that are very clearly identified by people outside the serie : for a smash bros, people were happy to play Cloud, playing a character from FFXI or FFXIV do not have the same appeal. Lore building and character building is something I miss, I wish they'd consider a phanta 5 but with a good team (Sega isn't always great at developing dialogues and stories when I look at PSU and some episode of PSO2)
Honestly, this would've tied in better with the saving the Saturn vid you did. The Saturn being more viable and selling better would've allowed the time necessary to develop the Dreamcast as Sega intended: with the DVD Drive. Save the Saturn, save the Dreamcast.
The Sega Saturn was over looked. I had both the Saturn for panzer dragon ,and dreamcast for power stone 1 & 2 . Jet set radio...nothing like it before. Let's not forget burning rangers on the Sega Saturn. Get it on import. Great game. Now we have unfinished, buggy, glitch games.
I agree with all but one thing. I think having it play DVDs out of the box without an add-on is really important to compete with the PS2. That was a major selling point for the PS2. Also, DVDs can hold a large amount of data, so the 2-sided CDs would not be necessary. Besides this, my only other complaint with the Dreamcast was the lack of a second analog stick on the controller, so I liked the controller mock-up shown very much. Edit: Also, having a 2-sided CD has the added inconvenience of having to flip it over at some point in the game. I would also wager that 2-sided CDs would be easier to scratch or get dirty, but I don't know for sure.
Good idea, however, I don't think it would have been cost-effective. The PS2 was released in March 2000, and sold at a loss, it made up for this in software sales over time. The Dreamcast was launched in Nov 1998, was also sold at a loss, Sega was strapped for cash, and DVD players were very expensive at the time. I don't think it could have been done at launch. Maybe this was why it was not suggested.
Sony owns many of the factories that make DVD drives and DVD discs. They helped invent the format lol. Sega would literally be paying money to Sony to make DVD drives for Dreamcast.
@@TheBigExclusive I thought about this afterwards, they would have had internal access to engineers for MPEG decoders and whatnot. They have been making Optical drives for over a decade too. It would have been much cheaper for them than Sega for sure.
Wasn’t DVD a Toshiba or Panasonic thing? Maybe I’m thinking HD DVD in which Sony learned from their failed Betamax vs VHS format era this time buying the High Definition disc format market by paying movie studios big money to support their BluRay instead of HD DVD…
This being a "What If" scenario, a few things come to mind: -In this timeline, Sega still has the Sega CD and 32X in its history, as well as the backlash/sentiment. I am not so sure people would accept a DVD rom or modem attachment after the fact. -One of the things I felt Sega got right with the DC was the inclusion of the modem. This meant there was ONE userbase, everyone that bought a new Dreamcast was ready for online play. It meant a dev could explore online content because the potential audience was there. -While a big factor of the PS2's success was that DVD player capability, it was the media format itself that was key. If DVD isn't the storage media for this ALT DC from the get go, I'd rather just have a standalone DVD player for movies. An add-on DVD player just splits the userbase otherwise. -Saturn being chopped off at the knees was a major issue. Until Mr. Stolar, western development for the Saturn was falling into a rhythm, people who made Playstation titles would eventually port a lot of those games to the Saturn...It was an easier path than porting to the N64. The Saturn could have continued to bring cash in the western market, and it may have even been able to delay the DC's launch enough to allow for the inclusion of DVD as the storage media. This was also the reason many of the Saturn's 3rd parties did not return for the Dreamcast, as many devs had to either scrap Saturn projects or shift those to other platforms. -I am glad you touched on the infighting between SoJ and SoA, and yes Yuji Naka is on my beef list for having a diva fit when Sonic Team's Nights engine was being used by a SoA team to develop a Saturn Sonic Xtreme game. He should have jumped in to help bring it to life. I also got beef for Sonic Team not bringing out a Nights sequel during the Saturn's or Dreamcast's life. It took one of the other members to bring the sequel to the Wii 11 years later.
Sega and WCW are a fascinating pair. Both distant second companies in their industries, both managed to eventually become number one for a time, then both undone by internal hubris and the renewed fire of their competitors.
@@scottjamesfirst It's not about knowing better, it's about hindsight. SLX did mention that this was just for fun and that this isn't a knock on the people running the show at the time. The people who were there at the time and did nothing while making whole podcast episodes or books today about how they would have saved the company are pretty annoying, though. Happens a lot more often with WCW, but I think Tom Kalinski is guilty of this to some degree.
About the Dreamcast memory. Unfortunately not a lot of devs utilized the amazing texture compression capabilities of the machine. With 4-bit textures (16 colors, which is really enough for single color materials such as grass, wood, metals, stones, skin, cloth, leather etc) it had a compression rate of 32:1 instead of the typical compression rate of 4:1 for 32-bit RGBA channels (which the other consoles had). With other words the Dreamcast's 8MB VRAM could theoretically store 60MB worth of texture data (with the last ~4MB of 64MB being addressed to the framebuffer) In practice the DC had - 8-60MB worth of texture storage (Insane amount for the time) - 16MB of System memory (Which is A LOT for game code) - 2MB of Audio memory. Compare this to the PS2 which had 4MB VRAM, many of the most impressive games had to rely on software that streamed textures from RAM to VRAM in order to cope with the minuscule VRAM amount. The XBOX had 64MB, which sounds like much, but it was shared memory across the whole system... In light of this I think the Dreamcast could stand head to head with 6th generation in the memory department, at least as long as the hardware was properly used and fully utilized. The Dreamcast neither lacked RAM or VRAM in the face of competition due to its PowerVR2 Hardware features. Where the console would eventually become outperformed was in raw polycount (PS2, GC and XBOX) and programmeable shaders (XBOX, and GC. although GC didn't have shaders technically) The Dreamcast DID however have proper hardware support for texture lighting techniques tough, such as normal maps (bumpmapping). This WAS actually used in games. Like certain coins in "Shenmue", the bumpiness on Godzilla in "Godzilla Generation" and the road and grass surfaces in "F1 Racing Championship" (although you cannot really see it in that game) just to name a few. Ultimately I just think the console died too quickly to showcase what it was truly capable of.
Wow! Good info. Dreamcast is still one of my favorite consoles. The saying "the candle that burns twice as bright lasts half as long" is sadly so true with this system
64mb Vram in a 1998-99 console seems kinda overkill. Even some of the most powerful graphics cards for PC's at that time had no more than 16-to-32mb of Vram. Lets also remember that the OG Xbox was a high costly system to make too since it was a literal PC turned into a console. Even getting the Graphics Card Equivalent (Nvidia Geforce 3) cost $500 when launched. The PS2 rofl stomped every console & it only needed 32mb system ram & 4mb Vram. So I say, make it 24mb of system ram but keep the 8mb Vram.
Yes, the Dreamcast has some incredible hardware features for its time, compared to the PS2 it's a way more efficient and well thought system. Making changes in that particular area really isn't needed, it would have been clever to focus on the DVD player issue and the controller that was worse than the 3D Saturn's one (lost of soft feel in all compartiments, most annoying ones being the joystick and the d-pad that was awful, and went from the 6 iconic buttons to only 4, for fighting games it was a huge lost), with the missing second joystick to the right.
@@Mr.Atari2600By the time PS2 really started picking up there were a slew of budget cards like the GeForce 2 MX which was capable of games that were on par or better with the PS2. By 2005 the PC market had, graphically, left the PS2 long behind. As a PC gamer back then I was never very impressed with the PS2 graphics.
I've actually gone back and played dreamcast and ps2 titles. Using vga ,rhe image quality on the dreamcast still holds up well I comparison to ps2. Image quality wise ps2 looks like crap.
Shenmue being cancelled seems like the right call but shenmue is the reason Dreamcast ended up in my home so if shenmue doesn't exist I don't think I end up a Dreamcast owner.
Same here! 😊 I agreed with every point SLX , except for two: cancelling Shenmue & calling it Katana: 1)naming a game system for kids (in any generation) after a *weapon* isn't 'feasable'~ its just a boy's dream. 2) About Shenmue, what i wouldv'e done: Tell Yu-san he can still work of developing & refining the game engine, while still creating next-gen versions of previous Virtua/AM2 titles (VF, Hang-on, Tennis, etc.).WAIT til the 4th year THEN Sega would have enough stability/funding to afford the Shenmue project. Ther'd be Collector Editions, more online components (an online VS mode???😊) And what if DC still failed? No prob for Yu Suzuki, because he'd still have all the material of a ready Shenmue game, Sega'd still keep publishing rights as a dev company, and the whole thing would've started on a PS2, Xbox or even GameCube (no N64, sorry).
A healthier Dreamcast could've respawned development though. Metroid Dread was canceled and then respawned as one of the best Metroids ever so you never know. You might very just gotten one later than you did
Same and it was one of the games I was most hyped about at the time. I bought the DC when it was already price cut to $100 and came with Sonic Adventure but the two games I picked up that day were Jet Grind Radio and Shenmue
I wanted a dreamcast, the family got a ps2 because "of the dvd player inside". I really enjoyed the PS2 But once i got my hands on a second hand dreamcast, i realized how much potential the dreamcast had in 1999...
@jakescartoons6045 it is cold hard facts, and if u don't believe it, ur delusional, with all due respect , that is just nostalgia and brand loyalty talking , PS2 is the best selling console of all times and DC is just a footnote in gaming history.
Even just imagining the Dreamcast being around for another solid 3-4 years would've been great. So many awesome SEGA arcade games left there because they could not find a home console conversion anywhere else. You're absolutely correct, decisions made by SEGA as far back as 1996-1997 put the DC in such a terrible position that it was doomed way before launch. In the end, I still had some great memories with the console, it's one of my absolute favorite, thanks for the great video!
There is are solid engineering reasons why CDs, DVDs and blu-ray disks have a hole and not locating pins to mount the disk. Without the hole a significant portion of the population would not be able to insert or remove a disk without touching the disk surface because their hands are too small. Locating pins would also be small and fragile compared to a spindle mount especially when you consider that there must be some sort of positive locking action to keep the disk in place on top of the spindle.
Dear god, that CD design is going to be insanely difficult to keep from getting scratched. Those 3 spaced out holes seem like they’re going to be incredibly tough for kids and teenagers to hook onto the prongs. Making a CD double sided like a laser disc seems like a good idea until you consider malleability.
"Let's save the dreamcast!" >Proceeds to remove everything that made the dreamcast so iconic. 🤣 Probably all true though from a business perspective. Great video - cool look into an alternate reality. 👍
I don’t know man. Katana sounds kinda cringe to me. I didn’t mind the name Dreamcast. I don’t think any Sega console had an issue with bad naming to be fair. I didn’t even mind the name 32X. Also I would have made the DVD add on more of a side thing, as they could have made a revision Dreamcast in 2001 that was backwards compatible with proper Dreamcast games. The Xbox 360 had the HDdvd thing and that seamed silly. For Sony it made sense as it was perfect timing, but I don’t know how many people wanted add ons on a Sega Machine in 1999. I still have ptsd with my tower of power
@@otterdonnelly9959 yeah, not sure why removing online worked. I think there were some OK ideas, but the dreamcast did most things right. So it’s hard to really do much about it, the uphill battle was too steep.
I agree! But at least a katana is a real thing that could be interpreted in different ways. Dreamcast is just a made up word lol! But it’s technically light years better than “PlayStation”. Ugh! Ooh, the Sega Light Year! There’s an idea! 😂
@@opaljk4835 😄 I don’t like Katana either. But I’m asleep when I’m dreaming; that’s not a good way to make your system seem interesting. “So boring you’ll fall asleep and dream about good games!” I’m surprised that wasn’t a thing back then haha! Plus, going from Master System, Genesis, Saturn….dream…cast…😬 From names that convey power, scale, and majesty to a made up word about dreams? They could’ve called it the Sega Sheep Counter I guess 🤦🏻♂️😄 I’m just having fun, by the way. I love my Dreamcast and I’d never actually want to change its name. 👍🏻
Changing the Dreamcast name to something as 2000's as "Katana" is a mistake. The Dreamcast name isn't just loved because it's retro, it's a geniunely good name. It's sort of mysterious in a way. Cancelling Shenmue, while it would save a huge amount of money, would be an even bigger mistake in the long run because without Shenmue, there is no Yakuza. Sega would lose what is now one of its Big 3 marquee franchises, even if it took a while for it to get to that point. Cut the budget. Scale Shenmue back if need be. Don't cancel it entirely.
The reality is this is about saving Sega’s console business, not saving the Yakuza franchise that won’t be around until the mid 2000s. If the Dreamcast was successful, Shenmu could be put in production later on, not as a half-assed game with cut content, but as the original vision and it can turn a profit now with an increased user base.
I hate sports games, they bore me to tears, everything from before and after the dreamcast...2k on the dreamcast though had me.@manuginobilisbaldspot2
The Dreamcast was on track to go toe to toe with the PS2 and was outselling it that first Christmas. It's just the Sega infighting and money woes. We almost had Tekken Tag on the Dreamcast
To be fair this was due to the extreme PS2 shortages that were occurring but the dreamfast still sold excellent during the Christmas season of 2000 and was literally 0.1% away from overtaking nintendo for 2nd place in market control but the dreamfast while selling decently was still not making sega a profitable company
I loved the Dreamcast, I got one a few weeks after launch having just turned 14 yo. It was like having the arcade at home, console graphics were finally about on par to Sega Model 3 arcade games (my childhood dream). I remember being blown away by the launch lineup games like Sonic Adventure, House of the Dead 2, Hydro Thunder, and Soul Calibur. I also later got Crazy Taxi and Resident Evil Code Veronica, which also blew my mind. I think the jump between the Saturn/PS1/N64 to the Dreamcast/PS2/GameCube was the largest in the industry and has never quite happened again.
The Dreamcast didn't fail... Sega failed the Dreamcast. Still my favorite console. It even has the definitive edition of my favorite game of all time, THPS2.
Dude I was listening to your videos Sega Lord X most of the evening while playing Dreamcast and then in the night when sleeping. Then I wake up and see you posted a new video about Dreamcast, like Magic! You are my favourite gaming channel bro.
@@earlyriser03 it’s quite clear that Yugi Naka was one of the main problems at Sega as well Hayo Nakayama who ran Sega into the ground with his fostering the toxic culture that existed at Sega imagine if Nintendo had that kind of culture they wouldn’t of survived Eva it’s because everybody had the same vision at Nintendo. It’s why they are still around today.
Naka gets a bad rep for the STI crap but honestly, STI were horrible and their demos were shockingly bad, people grew to like Chris Senn because of his engagement with fans, but tbh Senn was a kid in way over his head, he shouldn't have been anywhere near leading a project like that as a young 20 something.
@@liquidsnake6879 Naka deserves his bad rep because every story we’ve heard about him over the decades confirms he was a brilliant, arrogant jerk. Naka was also “a young 20-something” when Sonic 1, 2, and even 3 launched, and he’s considered one of the principles of Sonic’s creation. In fact, a number of the Sonic team in those days were “young 20-somethings”. Age isn’t the factor you think it is. What matters is ability and resources, and as we definitely know, Naka withheld resources from STI when they tried to create X-Treme.
@@earlyriser03 Yes, he withheld his engine, and clearly had a problem with STI leading the Sonic project, the thing is i can't blame him looking at the demos, it's all horrible. Their concepts were bad, their cartoon tie-in idea was bad, introducing characters like Tiara Boobowski was bad, the fisheye cameras were bad i could go on. Naka never showed disrespect to Traveler's Tales for example, only to STI because only STI ran around like headless chickens in way over their heads. I dare even say if Sonic Xtreme had come out, based on what i've seen and experienced from all the demos available, Sonic Adventure wouldn't have happened because Sonic as a franchise would've died with the Saturn, like Shinobi. And that's before considering they were going up against Crash Bandicoot and Mario 64 lol Sonic would've been so far beneath those two that it would've just buried SEGA even more
@@liquidsnake6879 and just like that, your age argument evaporates… You have a very clear bias against STI. At least you refocus the argument on what actually matters: ability and resources. If their concepts needed work, they should have been fostered. If they had zero potential, then they deserved to be let go. However, it’s interesting that you fail to mention part of STI’s overarching concept, the perspective and level design in Xtreme, eventually materialized in Sonic Lost World... In any case, talent should receive guidance from the more experienced, not be disrespected as you seemingly believe was justified. Especially when those doing the disrespecting produced later efforts like Balan while partaking in a little insider trading. Whoops… Obviously it wasn’t just Naka, as it was part of a greater toxic company culture, but he absolutely leaned into it and took outsized credit for efforts he had little to no involvement with. I’ll never fault Naka for making decisions that protected Sonic’s integrity. It’s his attitude that was always the problem. If you’re going to continue to excuse and justify Naka to me while piling on a team of devs that were trying to chart new territory for an established franchise, then that is your right. Just know I’ll drop my civility and respond with mockery from here on.
I love these "Let's Save" videos. I hope he's over there compiling a list of these for future videos. When I was in college, a few friends of mine and I would have sessions where we'd speculate over past game consoles and would sit around and talk about what the developers could have done to keep them relevant and profitable indefinitely. They'd always be submerged in concepts and ideas we were so sure were BS at that time,but seems to all have come to fruition. I remember one of my friends would always say, "One day, people are going to start playing retro games again and it's going to create a society of individuals that just love talking about old Atari, NES, SNES, and Genesis games and consoles." We'd always laugh because it seemed those consoles were so far behind us at that point, and nobody would ever find a reason to cling to them like we did. However, every time I watch one of these, I think about us sitting around our apartments dreaming up crazy ideas to rejuvenate interest in retro consoles. Great video as always. I'm looking forward to more of these from you.
I'd say 1: Use DVD instead of the propietary discs. 2: Get GTA 3. 3: Don't waste millions on Shenmue, reduce the scope, the whole first game can't be what in a movie would be the first 20 minutes, the "call to adventure", the part where "something happens that makes the hero start his journey and go on adventure" should be the beginning, not the whole game. That part should have been over in one or two hours, by hour two the hero should have been getting off the boat in the new city to properly start the adventure. Shenmue 1 should have covered several chapters of the whole story the director had planned, and Shenmue 2 should have ended it. Worst case scenario, plan the whole thing to fit in a trilogy. 4: try to get a better console version of Diablo 1 and the exclusive console version of Diablo 2. 5: port Virtua Fighter 4 to the system. 6: ¿try to get tekken? ¿some mortal kombat newer than 4? ¿maybe shaolin monks because it's arcadey, make it four player co op to have an advantage over the ps2 version?. 7: make sequels of all the famous and loved Genesis/Megadrive franchises. Recover the Sega identity Saturn lost.
GTA 3 was actually initially prototyped on the Dreamcast (confirmed by Rockstar dev who worked on the game). It didn't get very far, only a few months before development shifted to PS2 due to changing market conditions. Same as other big IP's, titles were being cancelled due to the Dreamcast's poor sales and Sega's financial issues. If Sega and the Dreamcast performed better, we probably would have had GTA 3 on the DC as well.
Not only GTA 3, But you'll need a port of DBZ: Budokai as well. Edit: Also make Sega GT into the Gran Turismo killer it should of been to keep Kaz on his toes
The problem with sequels to Genesis franchises is that the team that would be developping those titles were hard at work on similarly good titles like crazy taxi, Skies of arcadia, Jet set radio, Shenmue. So yeah instead of Shenmue we would have had something else. The real problem was the size of the team and the too few outside developers bringing new stuff on the console.
It’s funny you mention wanting Sega to port Tekken as a few years ago Katsuhiro Harada (Director of most Tekken titles) said that Sega approached him and Namco to port Tekken Tag Tournament 1 to the Dreamcast Instead of the PS2 (if this did go ahead Sega would offer a Virtua Fighter character as a Guest Character). But, Harada and Namco said no (I’m not sure what their reasonings were).
I liked a lot of your ideas, but a “DVD add on” was a terrible idea. Add ons never work, (Xbox media remote, 360 HD-DVD drive, 32X, PSVR etc) so I’m really surprised you think that was a viable missed opportunity. I think the bigger miss was using GD-Rom media, they should’ve just used DVD media, period.
It needed a DVD drive, and the controller needed to be a DualShock clone like all modern pads are, but with the VMU and analogue triggers. Basically needed to be the OG Xbox pad with a VMU in the middle. Microsoft fixed the Dreamcast controller. Games-wise, it wasnt bad for hardcore gamers, but for more casual gamers it seriously needed a good football/soccer simulation game. Not having Pro Evo and FIFA just made the console a complete no-go for many millions of Europeans and South Americans. I had many friends who looked at the graphics on my Dreamcast, and basically said "It looks amazing. Imagine how great PES/FIFA would be on it?". They would ultimately stick with their PS1/N64 until PS2 released.
I always believed that charging $250 for the DC instead of $199 would have been a better move. It made Sega lose money they couldn't afford to at the time and I don't think $50 would have slowed down sales as it was still a good price. Also, maybe removing the dial-up modem would have been better as broadband was gaining ground in the US at the time. People could buy it the adapter that worked for them separately which would also help Sega from losing too much money.
You can blame Bernie Stoliar for that. Sega of Japan wanted to sell the Dreamcast in the states at an RSVP of $249.99. But Bernie disobeyed that decision and had the Dreamcast sold for $199.99. Every DC was sold at a $50 loss and it pissed Sega of Japan off big time; resulting in Bernie Stoliar's Termination and being replaced with Peter Moore.
@@filipmartinez1162 Yes, but since it may have helped kill the console it can be argued that paying $200 for a console that lasted 1.5 years is a much lesser value than paying more for a console that might have had a full lifespan.
One thing to remember is that when the Dreamcast launched, in '98, the single biggest selling console was the PS1 - which by now you could pick up less than $100. The PS1 kept selling WELL into the PS2's era, so I suspect Sega was trying to compete with the lower priced console as well...
@@dtester All kids had to do was know about it and they had an arcade quality system for 200$. Gamers just didn’t do their homework back then or were blindly loyal to Sony, they had potential to sell more with the lower pricepoint.
Im glad the Dreamcast died for our sins. Had it come out 2 years later it would have been a generic fourth leg in the 6th gen console war. Came out in the middle of a huge leap from 5th and 6th gen and was knocking out arcade ports during the last few years of the great arcade era.
I wrote this before watching the video. I quite like your ideas, especially the technical bit and also agree on Shenmue not coming out. - Not hire Bernie Stolar - Not quit supporting the Saturn so soon - Release Shenmue on the Saturn with Shenmue 2 on the Dreamcast - Forgo any proprietary media format - Approach Microsoft to publish their MS Studios games on the Dreamcast - Not abandon the 8-button controllers, with a slight evolution of the Saturn's pads, both 3D and regular, and have dual analogs - Skip the VMU and make it a simpler memory card situation like the PS1, on the console itself instead of the controllers - Skip the online early - Bring all of the 1990s Sega arcade games home!
Great points. I also hold firm to the sentiment that if the 32X didnt exist, then the Saturn and the Dreamcast wouldnt have become commercial failures. The 32X wasnt the only real disaster that Sega had but it was definitely 1 of the top 3 disasters. It caused so much destruction to the company.
I wouldn't have agreed with this until that leak came out. Its a painful thing to admit, but Kevin K killed SEGA with the 32X and Sony simply took SEGA's spot as Nintendo's rival during the 32x but era.
@@novelezra yeah, people sometimes give the Sega CD a bad rep, and I admit that the Sega CD didnt do Sega any favors, but at the same time, it isnt what catapulted Sega into catastrophe. The 32X is what made the company almost go bankrupt even sooner than it did.
@@thechosenone2123 Hearing that they literally had warehouses full of the things is just painful. It was literally weighing them down and it's no surprise that SEGA Japan lost faith
I dunno about that. People love to argue about hardware and marketing and competition but the the bottom line is a particular console needs a really strong library of games. Thats why the NES killed and the SNES murdered and why the N64 slapped like a toddler with palsy. The Genesis had an OK line of games and everything after was unimpressive. Allegedly the Playstation was much easier to develop games for and part of the reason so many companies went in that direction. And it had an excellent library of games.
I'm really a fan of the amount of work and thought that you put into these. Thank you for doing these love letters to the consoles and games we all love. I don't know how often you get to hear it, but your videos are a source of joy and happiness for those of us who share your love and passion for these games/systems/companies. Thank you.
@@starstarstar4643it makes sense with hindsight and business sense, but turns it into a gray blob console. If they changed the company culture to the extent proposed, it just wouldn’t be something I’m interest in. I’m glad Sega is still around and still a bit weird. With or without consoles.
He is right about the controller. The Dreamcast controller was an awkward mess. All they had to do was add two joysticks to the 6 button Sega Saturn controller.
@@auditoryproductions1831 I don’t think it’s an awkward mess, that’s debatable. I think it’s very comfortable to use and love the layout of it, even the wire at the bottom and VMU screen. The additional joystick would be the only thing that feels like its missing.
@@Wil_Dsensei agree it really depends on your comfort. Some people love the n64 controller and I dont see why. Its just a pref. I mean all of this said the real new dreamcast was the original xbox😅😊
The Katana name wouldn't have worked in the UK. We had the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles renamed to Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles for a start. Wouldn't matter these days though as we've accepted Ninja for a long time. Back then it was an offensive word so i doubt Katana would even have been legal
Sega AM3 would be a better name, and postponing the launch for 6 months to port all AM2 games to it, as well as including a Sonic with it. Then after launch work on Streets of Rage 2, Eternal Champions, Streets of Rage, Ecco, etc. As well as securing the EA deal.
@@unassailable6138 I like the name Dreamcast but this is a hot take and probably an unpopular opinion. The Dreamcast is my least favourite Sega console.
once everyone realized you could just rent games and them burn them (most of them) to CDR which plays in the dreamcast just fine, it was the final nail for the dreamcast. they sold too many units before they fixed that.
I'm not sure about the *DVD* in addition to the *Modem* _being add-ons..._ Too many "add-on" shenanigans lead to consumer confusion, and to the perception the console doesn't really have those features. For example, the Saturn also had all manners of add-ons, including modem, and they never took off. Sony with all their marketing could never get the PS Move (Wiimote derivative) to take off. This to say that a console is defined by *what it packs in out-of-the-box,* and that was ever truer in an era where mass internet adoption still hadn't fully taken off, and thus consumers were often misinformed, and rumors and word-of-mouth would often mislead people. Heck, people are mislead today -- a time where everyone has the entire internet in their smartphones -- and they would be even more mislead back then. Let's not forget how the initial investment for a console already creates "investment exhaustion" and the thing people will be eager to buy after that will be games.... BUT with people also having to buy an extra controller or 2, and memory cards/ VMUs, that already creates enough "consumer anxiety". And with people having to buy even 2 more add-ons in order to have the "full experience".... I just don't see those add-ons ever taking off tbh. I'm not saying the strategies here aren't good (most of them in fact, are great) but delegating DVD and Modem to an add-on will not make this console be seen as "the internet console" (like the Dreamcast was) or as the "the DVD console" like the PS2 was -- and marketing strategies are often based on "memes" and word of mouth, which this doesn't help create. We need a slightly different approach, or at least some mechanism that will have the audience both informed about internet and DVD, and EAGER to buy them. Heck, if the 2 could be combined into a single, simple to acquire and setup, add-on, the better.
The way he changed the way the discs worked would have been a really bad idea. Shoehorning a way to play dvds when you can't do it out of the box is not a good way to go. This gives off Sega CD syndrome.
I agree with this concern, and there’s another one that wasn’t addressed. If Sega wanted to publish X-men vs. Street Fighter, Marvel vs. Street Fighter and Street Fighter Alpha 3 in the USA in 1998? That involves manufacturing and selling an additional piece of hardware - a much bigger gamble than just pressing discs. I don’t think US consumer would have wanted to purchase an add-on for their Saturn late in its life.
@@LampHatScottYes, and I think the DVD add-on would simply replace it as the method of piracy since it would need to be compatible with normal shaped discs.
I was so so hyped for a Dreamcast I imported one just to play MVC, HOTD 2 and sonic. I don’t regret a single thing about my decision. I had so much fun and was a fighting game junkie at the time which filled that cavity like no other system.
Somewhere in another universe, Sega Lord X owns Sega Enterprises & has completely took over the video games industry. Man I wish because I miss my Sega Genesis, 32X, Sega CD, Saturn and Dreamcast (er Katana) LMAO!
The Dreamcast is the prime example of a work of art in gaming that still never was financially successful enough to last. That gaming is history worth preserving no matter how it did. I will never forget that 2-3 years of loving the family dreamcast. Fact of the matter was when the PS2 and gamecube came out it was over. Also for me PC was becoming a dream come true around then with the amount of things you could do that consoles just simply didn't have.
Oh man, I kinda knew Sega was in trouble at my young age then, but I had for sure thought the Dreamcast was absolutely amazing and gonna keep them hanging on. Lots of my friends and I had a Dreamcast!
Y'know, those what-if scenarios are so compelling to think of, I just caught myself thinking "hey, imagine if we had a hybrid of Game Dev Tycoon and PC Building Simulator where you deal with the whole business of creating a console from the ground up". Like all the way from research and planning hardware up to the marketing, launch and post-sales. We could literally mess around with all of those parameters just for kicks and see how things could've played out. If there's any game devs who follow this channel and are reading this, it's up for grabs ;)
Sega Lord X never heard of a LP 45 adapter :p I think having to have 2 drives is just another SEGA CD mistake. That controller would have been sick tho... SEGA NET was one of the best things about Dreamcast. If Sega wasn't so broke it would have given them a huge head start. They should have partnered with Microsoft from day one.
@@everythingmainecooncat4938 the PS2 was washed away over the Dreamcast, which I was never interested in that then I rate the GameCube better than the Dreamcast
I don't blame Sega for investing in heavily in online game. Sega needed something to differentiate themselves to get people excited. The brand was so tarnished, releasing a vanilla Sega system wasn't going to cut it. Dreamcast was almost perfectly executed. Agreed that 2k sports and Shenmue were the only slip ups, but wouldn't have made enough difference anyway. The VC deal made more sense in the context of online gaming as well, so not a completely terrible decision. Shenmue was a mistake though. Bernie Stolar doesn't get enough credit for the Dreamcasts short lived success. The only thing that could have saved the Dreamcast was to undo the many, many major mistakes made before it.
I would have simply put the development of Shenmue on a hiatus until Katana has a large install base. Similar to how you changed the SegaNet strategy. Also, I think Dreamcast is a way cooler name, personally. I have no nostalgic attachment since I was born 3 years after the Dreamcast was discontinued.
I love the name Dreamcast. Katana doesn't sound (family)friendly. Also love the online as a sales strategy. It was just implemented badly. I don't know if the proposed EA would be better than what we got. I like your cd idea. Fast dvd add on would be good too. Baldur's Gate was licensed and in production by SEGA, but was cancelled. I agree that the US release must be postponed. The European launch much support far more countries. In most markets it was almost ignored from the get go.
Sega is a funny company, it had all these great games but where are they today? Nintendo has so many games that can trace their roots back to the NES era. How many games does Sega have that never got a sequel or continued to be relevant?
Back in 2002 I turned 18 years old, had my first real job, and was ready to graduate to a different console than my N64. I didn’t really mind going with either the Dreamcast or the PlayStation 2. But at the time, I needed a DVD player (just like most other people on the planet who could afford a console) so I went with the PlayStation. It wouldn’t have mattered if the Dreamcast had the option for an additional DVD add on. That was more money and something I had to purchase separately. Having it built in (like the PS) for the price was just too tempting to pass up for the general consumer. My brother went with the Dreamcast. Since we lived in the same home, I got to play both systems often. Although the Dreamcast seemed to have better graphics overall, it wasn’t enough to counter act the much larger library of games available on the PS at the time. My DVD drive failed twice over the following few years and had to be sent to Sony for repair. As I got older, I did come to appreciate the novelty of many of the Dreamcast titles and ended up buying one for myself. Definitely have a place in my heart for Sega, they were a company who put out many unique and fun products. Unfortunately it wasn’t the names of the consoles, controller design, or titles like Shenmue that did them in, it was the constant internal conflict between Sega of America and Sega of Japan. “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” -Jesus Christ
Don't forget, if this theoretical Katana were still on the market when Xbox & GC drop, Sega's not going to be porting their stuff to those consoles. A pretty decent chunk of Microsoft's JP developed library is now wiped out. I don't think it would affect Nintendo quite as much though.
Fun fact sonic adventure 2 battle and sonic heroes sold over 5 million units combined on a system that sold 22 million units Segas presence missing from the GameCube and especially xbox would considerably harm the two systems not to mention alot of Xbox exclusives originally started out as dreamcast exclusives that were canceled with death of the system
He made that video a while ago. But of course, in those videos, he does not build on top of other fantasy scenarios, otherwise it'd really stray way too far away from reality to be interesting.
I didn't have a dreamcast as a kid. My neighbor did though. but 9.9.99 is still burned into my brain after all these years. that truly was one of the best marketing decisions ever
Dreamcast would have to come with built in DVD drive in order to have any hope of countering PS2 hype. Having DVD as $149.99 peripheral is a nonstarter.
I couldn’t disagree more about the EA part and getting rid of their sports titles. It seems like you didn’t really play them a lot. They were the biggest pluses and some of the biggest reasons to buy a Dreamcast. If you get rid of those you get rid of a lot of Dreamcast users, most likely me included. The sports titles are what sold me on the console.
@@aaronsnowden6311 Sega were forced to drop out of the console race in order to survive thanks to their blenders and the failure of the Saturn as well as the Sega CD and 32X I would say the latter two were mistakes and should never have been made and I feel it should’ve gone to Nintendo route by using add on chips in their cartridges which would’ve made a world of difference especially maybe for extra sound channels maybe for extra voice samples in fact Sega of America actually did that with the Joe Montana series with the sportstalk technology Even if it did sound like a speak and spell lol
The only thing I am not personally sure if is the disk format. Having that thing in the center is of disks and connect with small bits sticking up is just a point of failure waiting to happen. But the rest of it, I am on board with.
I disagree with a few things: Keep SegaNet. Expand online. No reason PSO shouldn’t be as huge in the west. I think it could’ve had the position Monster Hunter has, earlier. And bring online MvC2/CvS2 to the West. Keep Dreamcast name. Way better than Katana. Black Belt is better than Katana as well but Dreamcast was perfect. We aren’t canceling Shenmue, that was definitely something that should be managed better and focused on more to be the true showcase it was always meant to be. Play DVDs. I think it would’ve helped Sega last for at least another console gen and we would’ve seen a successor to fight PS3/360/Wii. I will add that Sega needed a backcompat program for Saturn games and a company focus of localizing Japanese games properly and respectfully internally and uncensored. No reason why Atlus games didn’t have a home base on Dreamcast.
They were that close to win the lottery with Online. World of Warcraft managed to crack the code and made billions because millions of players poured into this MMO experience and kept paying their licence out of habit. That's frustrating that it didn't work for Sega, PSO had a huuuuge potential for that (and today even though the serie doesn't break the video game industry, it is said to have brought Sega a Billion dollars according to their own records so yeah, they managed to turn a profit)
Backwards compatibility on Dreamcast for Saturn would have been impossible without adding hardware and complicating the system. That's how PS2 did it. It didn't have the processing power to emulate them.
@@joshuasanderson7359 ok…would still be more appreciated than a dvd add-on. Would’ve brought more eyes to the Japanese Saturn library that also would’ve been brought over. We are all spitballing.
Since Dreamcast was launched way earlier than PS2, Xbox and GameCube, I would give Dreamcast internal expansion slots. 16 MB of RAM was enough at launch, but it should have a slot to increase RAM to 32 MB or even 128 MB few years later, when RAM prices dropped significantly. Dreamcast should also have IDE connector for HDD. Similar situation to RAM, HDDs were quickly evolving. Growing from 8 GB up to 80 GB in just 3-5 years. 1998-2002 is the time when gaming hardware changed the most. 1998 was a time of early 3D accelerators with Fixed-pipeline, while in late 2002 Radeon 9700 was released and it was (almost) capable of Xbox 360 and PS3 graphics! The only way for Dreamcast to survive against Sony, Nintendo and Xbox was to have hardware that can be improved with time. I know this didn't worked with Sega Genesis, but Amiga was able to be relevant up to 2005, despite its hardware being from 1992-1994. Amiga had so strong community, that 3rd party companies were designing Turbo add-ons and ways to install next-gen PC hardware, like 3D accelerators. Sega could also play dirty. Instead of using DVD. They could add DivX support. Movie piracy was massive in early 2000's. In my country DVD players were promoted by ability to play DivX and other codecs. Keep in mind that Xbox was able to copy music from CDs into its HDD. Affordable Dreamcast that has a CD drive that is able to play DivX movies would sell really well. Though I had DVD drive in my 2001 PC, I've never really used it. Games were releasing on CDs for so long, that eventually I've got DVD-RW drive and my 2001 PC wasn't good enough to run new games released on DVDs.
More upgradeability options are super fascinating. We might have had arcade perfect ports of Naomi titles. The whole time period is peak gaming for me.
Once you get this controller in hands, you'll be happy player for 30 minutes then you need to rest your hands. Hardware like this is easy to improve to sell it again, sega would add second stick to a new revision of gamepads easily, the main problem is that Dreamcast discontinued entirely. But just by looking at the ergonomics of this modern Dreamcast + Saturn controller makes me horrified. Dreamcast controller was on heck of the cute tech. This looks monstrous
If the Dreamcast was a success, we probably wouldn't have had the Xbox come on the scene in the same way. Partnering with Microsoft might have been an option that would have been open had Sega asked about it considering the Windows CE support. Also, if the EA deal fell apart over the PowerVR implementation and the sports titles. So 50/50 they would come back still going with PowerVR hardware?
Tbh it was doomed from the start. The only reason it got off the ground was because a dying man loaned Sega hundreds of millions then essentially absolved the debt. There was more to it but it was being held together by glue and popsicle sticks, basically. Did I know all this in 99 when I bought mine? Absolutely not, and I still love the damn thing
@@DCMCOSPLAYdotCOM if I were running Sega one of the first things I’ve done back then is fire Nakayama and get rid of Yugi Naka who was toxic and Yama presided over the toxic Japanese culture at Sega of Japan and I will never forgive him for the premature discontinuation of the mega drive.
I worked my first job that entire summer of 99 to get a Dreamcast. I quit my job on 9.9.99. My mom said “dont you have to work?” What do you mean mom I got my Dreamcast, job done.
“Mission Accomplished” we need your tax dollars to be here tho..
You still off?
But what about buying new games for your Dreamcast?
@@MemeinAndDreaminall you need is a Dreamcast and a cd burner and you’re set lol
@@michelleburke476
🤣
My mum won $500 at the casino and she bought me a Dreamcast at launch. What an incredible time to be alive!
WOW what a cool mom. Is she single? Asking for a friend 😃😄
that was nice of her
Nice
I wouldn't kill Shenmue, I'd simply just put it on the backburner until the dust settled on the Dreamcast's future. Greenlight the project after Dreamcast success is achieved.
Personally, I'd have left Shenmue to the whims of a 3rd party developer, even if it would've meant that it wouldn't necessarily be a Dreamcast (Katana) exclusive.
Oh man, I remember thinking "Dreamcast" was such a cool name at the time. Sounds like a mind bending interdimensial film. Maybe the coolest name of any console ever imo.
There's something about the Dreamcast atmosphere that felt so peaceful yet cool in it's own way. Katana just feels like your pandering to the aggressive 90's cool and I feel like it wouldn't hold up.
certainly better than xbox x xbox 1 pro version s ultra x scorpio xbox
"Dreamcast" is the best name ever chosen for a console indeed. It feels like reaching a new dimension, something never seen before, and the ambience set by its intro help to add a lot to that. I can't understand why one could ever think about changing this.
Fully agree! I love the name I wasn’t sure at first but after owning it, playing it, it’s so fitting it’s perfect. It really is a dream machine! Even love the controller and VMU’s. Favourite console, even when compared to other modern consoles.
That logo swirling with dream tune upon startup was magical. Starting up my DC never gets old
For me personally, the Dreamcast was never a failure!
At the time it was discontinued it was still being heavily supported, with loads of great games coming out all the time! I was 100% invested & was fully supporting it when it was announced that it would be discontinued, and I remember being completely shocked with disbelief & confusion when the announcement was made.
In my eyes, the system was still doing well & was an amazing experience, so I truly didn't understand why it was happening. For many of us, the Dreamcast was an amazing experience right up til the very end.
Yea I kept supporting too, but shocked like you when they announced they quit...
To This Day* I got one about 6 weeks ago (region free) and it’s probably my favourite console and I play it almost daily! The Dreamcast is still alive! Favourite Games on it that I own, so far:
Hydro Thunder, Sega Extreme Sports (Gem), NHL 2K2, SILVER, MDK2, Dolphin Blue, Trick Style, Millennium Solider Expendable. I enjoy playing Rush2049 but it is unforgiving so looking to get Daytona USA for best car racing game.
The Dreamcast didn't fail, it was the consumer who failed!
This is exactly how I rlevered and felt hearing it was being scrapped.
I felt the same way at the time. My father and I both loved the Dreamcast and were shocked when it was discontinued. We weren't delusional about the Dreamcast was doing but we didn't think it was so bad that it needed to be cancelled.
The Dreamcast. The one that could have been the G.O.A.T.
In a wat it was. Games are still developed for it.
Nah. It was entirely too weak to compete with the Xbox, PS2 and GameCube.
@@jamesburchill7522 don't need to be all about preference for a specific individual, I like it more than all those consoles
@@jamesburchill7522GameCube should of not be mentioned. And actually it did compete with the ps2 for a while
@@jamesburchill7522 I disagree, it had enough bonus features (modem, 4 controller ports) and one of the best sets of dev teams in the industry to compete successfully and find a niche. Gamecube and xbox would have struggled without Sega giving their consoles a little variety. The rerelease of sonic adventure 2 outsold RE4 on the gamecube and 3 of the top 30 games on the console were Dreamcast rereleases!
In my humble opinion, to rescue the Dreamcast, we might need to revisit the paths that brought us the 32X, Sega Nomad, and CDX. As a Sega enthusiast, I adore their hardware to bits, but let's face it - those gadgets were about as in demand as a snowblower in the Sahara.
Great video as always SLX
I mean, certainly, it could be argued that the Dreamcast wouldn't have needed saving if Sega's reputation wasn't tarnished by it's 3 prior major hardware releases. Maybe they'd have even been able to release Shenmue without burning the bank in the process.
@@kabbusses Not just Sega's reputation with consumers, but Sega's reputation with retailers was in the shitter too - after the Sega CD and 32X's failures and the Saturn's surprise launch, many large retailers simply refused to work with Sega from there on out.
The Dreamcast was such an incredible system.
What you mean ‘was’, it still is
My favorite sega system. Got it day one. Every game was available around here and I bought up as many as I could. My ps2 was just a glorified DVD player that first year so my attention stayed on the Dreamcast.
Never even got a ps2 got a Xbox for the Scarface game
Dreamcast is still my favorite console even 2 day
@@robert5235 Scarface: The World Is Yours is a masterpiece. I have both the PS2 version and the fan made remastered version on PC. If u want, I can tell u how to play the fan-made remaster, its so good
@@thechosenone2123what’s the difference between the fan made
@@chrisfern4699 Same game, just much better visuals
So there's a UA-camr who looked over sega's financial statements and the leaks and figured out that the Dreamcast was on track to be profitable if the arcade division had held out another year. Sega was financing Dreamcast losses with money from the arcade division until the break-even point and then in the final year or two of the dreamcast's life cycle they would have raked in a ton of money. But the arcade division collapsed before the Dreamcast could hit its profitable cycle
Can you give a source for this?
Highly unlikely tbh, the Dreamcast was infamously jailbroken and easy to play backups on, which were all over the internet on eDonkey and stuff even back in 2001. I know people actually made money selling Dreamcast burned CDs at the time.
Dreamcasts stopped selling almost entirely once the PS2 landed and the Xbox was coming and that added another massive competitor to the arena.
By the end i remember Dreamcasts in bargain bins because the stores couldn't sell them anymore, that was a major contrast with 1999 when it was hard to get one. So i fail to see where the profit would come from since they had sold all the Dreamcasts they were going to sell realistically and the software wasn't selling in high numbers either.
For me personally it was FFX that landed the killing blow, that thing looked AMAZING on the trailers
@@liquidsnake6879 you massively overestimate the average consumer.
Honestly don’t believe that considering the shenmue budget which was the real final nail to the coffin
@@stevesteve0521 you know they actually could have survived that. Not that it helped those resources really needed to go somewhere else but the game still sold pretty well and they probably only lost about 15 or 20 million on it which for a company of sega's size while bad wasn't anywhere near a deal breaker.
The problem is the business model for consoles is to lose money for several years and then make a bunch of it at the very end but to do that you need a money maker to support you in the meantime. Sony's got their insurance business and Microsoft has the windows and office monopolies but Sega only had the arcades
He said Phantasy Star 5 and my heart fluttered.
It is a game that I asked for so many years yet thinking it would replace phantasy star online, I think something would be missing.
I could have seen a Phantasy star 5 on saturn or on DS or 3DS were the budgets and time development weren't too harsh for Sega. They could have done that
It could still be done. Dragon Quest still does wonders, there's still demand for classic turn based JRPGs and sci-fi settings in them are scarce at best. I'd buy it full price
@@enigmaster84 I always thought so too, they could really have a team dedicated to PSO and another to turned base RPG (even if it is smaller)
I think the advantage in this is to create characters that are very clearly identified by people outside the serie : for a smash bros, people were happy to play Cloud, playing a character from FFXI or FFXIV do not have the same appeal.
Lore building and character building is something I miss, I wish they'd consider a phanta 5 but with a good team (Sega isn't always great at developing dialogues and stories when I look at PSU and some episode of PSO2)
Dreamcast is a great name.
made it sound mysterious
@Frank Agreed and to me it is a better name than Katana.
I remember reading it was a bad translation over to Japanese ... something like "casting away hope" :/ .... hope that wasn't true
100% a whole lot better than Katana to be honest. Katana sounds so cringey.
Honestly, this would've tied in better with the saving the Saturn vid you did. The Saturn being more viable and selling better would've allowed the time necessary to develop the Dreamcast as Sega intended: with the DVD Drive.
Save the Saturn, save the Dreamcast.
Same I was kinda disappointed he didn’t Tide it with the Saturn vid
The Sega Saturn was over looked. I had both the Saturn for panzer dragon ,and dreamcast for power stone 1 & 2 . Jet set radio...nothing like it before. Let's not forget burning rangers on the Sega Saturn. Get it on import. Great game. Now we have unfinished, buggy, glitch games.
I agree with all but one thing. I think having it play DVDs out of the box without an add-on is really important to compete with the PS2. That was a major selling point for the PS2. Also, DVDs can hold a large amount of data, so the 2-sided CDs would not be necessary. Besides this, my only other complaint with the Dreamcast was the lack of a second analog stick on the controller, so I liked the controller mock-up shown very much.
Edit: Also, having a 2-sided CD has the added inconvenience of having to flip it over at some point in the game. I would also wager that 2-sided CDs would be easier to scratch or get dirty, but I don't know for sure.
Good idea, however, I don't think it would have been cost-effective. The PS2 was released in March 2000, and sold at a loss, it made up for this in software sales over time.
The Dreamcast was launched in Nov 1998, was also sold at a loss, Sega was strapped for cash, and DVD players were very expensive at the time. I don't think it could have been done at launch. Maybe this was why it was not suggested.
Sony owns many of the factories that make DVD drives and DVD discs. They helped invent the format lol. Sega would literally be paying money to Sony to make DVD drives for Dreamcast.
@@TheBigExclusive I thought about this afterwards, they would have had internal access to engineers for MPEG decoders and whatnot. They have been making Optical drives for over a decade too. It would have been much cheaper for them than Sega for sure.
Maybe the CDs be dual layer like DVDs.
Wasn’t DVD a Toshiba or Panasonic thing? Maybe I’m thinking HD DVD in which Sony learned from their failed Betamax vs VHS format era this time buying the High Definition disc format market by paying movie studios big money to support their BluRay instead of HD DVD…
This being a "What If" scenario, a few things come to mind:
-In this timeline, Sega still has the Sega CD and 32X in its history, as well as the backlash/sentiment. I am not so sure people would accept a DVD rom or modem attachment after the fact.
-One of the things I felt Sega got right with the DC was the inclusion of the modem. This meant there was ONE userbase, everyone that bought a new Dreamcast was ready for online play. It meant a dev could explore online content because the potential audience was there.
-While a big factor of the PS2's success was that DVD player capability, it was the media format itself that was key.
If DVD isn't the storage media for this ALT DC from the get go, I'd rather just have a standalone DVD player for movies. An add-on DVD player just splits the userbase otherwise.
-Saturn being chopped off at the knees was a major issue. Until Mr. Stolar, western development for the Saturn was falling into a rhythm, people who made Playstation titles would eventually port a lot of those games to the Saturn...It was an easier path than porting to the N64. The Saturn could have continued to bring cash in the western market, and it may have even been able to delay the DC's launch enough to allow for the inclusion of DVD as the storage media.
This was also the reason many of the Saturn's 3rd parties did not return for the Dreamcast, as many devs had to either scrap Saturn projects or shift those to other platforms.
-I am glad you touched on the infighting between SoJ and SoA, and yes Yuji Naka is on my beef list for having a diva fit when Sonic Team's Nights engine was being used by a SoA team to develop a Saturn Sonic Xtreme game. He should have jumped in to help bring it to life. I also got beef for Sonic Team not bringing out a Nights sequel during the Saturn's or Dreamcast's life. It took one of the other members to bring the sequel to the Wii 11 years later.
Sega and WCW are a fascinating pair. Both distant second companies in their industries, both managed to eventually become number one for a time, then both undone by internal hubris and the renewed fire of their competitors.
@@scottjamesfirst It's not about knowing better, it's about hindsight. SLX did mention that this was just for fun and that this isn't a knock on the people running the show at the time.
The people who were there at the time and did nothing while making whole podcast episodes or books today about how they would have saved the company are pretty annoying, though. Happens a lot more often with WCW, but I think Tom Kalinski is guilty of this to some degree.
both were led by boobs
Great analogy.
About the Dreamcast memory. Unfortunately not a lot of devs utilized the amazing texture compression capabilities of the machine. With 4-bit textures (16 colors, which is really enough for single color materials such as grass, wood, metals, stones, skin, cloth, leather etc) it had a compression rate of 32:1 instead of the typical compression rate of 4:1 for 32-bit RGBA channels (which the other consoles had). With other words the Dreamcast's 8MB VRAM could theoretically store 60MB worth of texture data (with the last ~4MB of 64MB being addressed to the framebuffer) In practice the DC had
- 8-60MB worth of texture storage (Insane amount for the time)
- 16MB of System memory (Which is A LOT for game code)
- 2MB of Audio memory.
Compare this to the PS2 which had 4MB VRAM, many of the most impressive games had to rely on software that streamed textures from RAM to VRAM in order to cope with the minuscule VRAM amount. The XBOX had 64MB, which sounds like much, but it was shared memory across the whole system... In light of this I think the Dreamcast could stand head to head with 6th generation in the memory department, at least as long as the hardware was properly used and fully utilized. The Dreamcast neither lacked RAM or VRAM in the face of competition due to its PowerVR2 Hardware features. Where the console would eventually become outperformed was in raw polycount (PS2, GC and XBOX) and programmeable shaders (XBOX, and GC. although GC didn't have shaders technically) The Dreamcast DID however have proper hardware support for texture lighting techniques tough, such as normal maps (bumpmapping). This WAS actually used in games. Like certain coins in "Shenmue", the bumpiness on Godzilla in "Godzilla Generation" and the road and grass surfaces in "F1 Racing Championship" (although you cannot really see it in that game) just to name a few. Ultimately I just think the console died too quickly to showcase what it was truly capable of.
Wow! Good info. Dreamcast is still one of my favorite consoles. The saying "the candle that burns twice as bright lasts half as long" is sadly so true with this system
64mb Vram in a 1998-99 console seems kinda overkill. Even some of the most powerful graphics cards for PC's at that time had no more than 16-to-32mb of Vram. Lets also remember that the OG Xbox was a high costly system to make too since it was a literal PC turned into a console. Even getting the Graphics Card Equivalent (Nvidia Geforce 3) cost $500 when launched.
The PS2 rofl stomped every console & it only needed 32mb system ram & 4mb Vram. So I say, make it 24mb of system ram but keep the 8mb Vram.
Yes, the Dreamcast has some incredible hardware features for its time, compared to the PS2 it's a way more efficient and well thought system. Making changes in that particular area really isn't needed, it would have been clever to focus on the DVD player issue and the controller that was worse than the 3D Saturn's one (lost of soft feel in all compartiments, most annoying ones being the joystick and the d-pad that was awful, and went from the 6 iconic buttons to only 4, for fighting games it was a huge lost), with the missing second joystick to the right.
@@Mr.Atari2600By the time PS2 really started picking up there were a slew of budget cards like the GeForce 2 MX which was capable of games that were on par or better with the PS2. By 2005 the PC market had, graphically, left the PS2 long behind. As a PC gamer back then I was never very impressed with the PS2 graphics.
I've actually gone back and played dreamcast and ps2 titles. Using vga ,rhe image quality on the dreamcast still holds up well I comparison to ps2. Image quality wise ps2 looks like crap.
Shenmue being cancelled seems like the right call but shenmue is the reason Dreamcast ended up in my home so if shenmue doesn't exist I don't think I end up a Dreamcast owner.
Same here! 😊 I agreed with every point SLX , except for two: cancelling Shenmue & calling it Katana:
1)naming a game system for kids (in any generation) after a *weapon* isn't 'feasable'~ its just a boy's dream.
2) About Shenmue, what i wouldv'e done: Tell Yu-san he can still work of developing & refining the game engine, while still creating next-gen versions of previous Virtua/AM2 titles (VF, Hang-on, Tennis, etc.).WAIT til the 4th year THEN Sega would have enough stability/funding to afford the Shenmue project. Ther'd be Collector Editions, more online components (an online VS mode???😊)
And what if DC still failed? No prob for Yu Suzuki, because he'd still have all the material of a ready Shenmue game, Sega'd still keep publishing rights as a dev company, and the whole thing would've started on a PS2, Xbox or even GameCube (no N64, sorry).
much as I love the game the money spent oof
A healthier Dreamcast could've respawned development though. Metroid Dread was canceled and then respawned as one of the best Metroids ever so you never know. You might very just gotten one later than you did
If anything cancelling it for the time being would have helped until SEGA could come back to it in year 2 or 3.
Same and it was one of the games I was most hyped about at the time. I bought the DC when it was already price cut to $100 and came with Sonic Adventure but the two games I picked up that day were Jet Grind Radio and Shenmue
Whoa. My favorite thing about the Dreamcast is the VMU, making those built in and unremovable from the controller is wild.
I wanted a dreamcast, the family got a ps2 because "of the dvd player inside". I really enjoyed the PS2 But once i got my hands on a second hand dreamcast, i realized how much potential the dreamcast had in 1999...
Most normal people threw away the DC in the closet once the PS2 came out, a much much much better console with much better games.
@@EpicLebaneseNerd I disagree, but whatever.
@jakescartoons6045 free country but u can't deny facts .
@@EpicLebaneseNerd It's not a fact. It's an opinion.
@jakescartoons6045 it is cold hard facts, and if u don't believe it, ur delusional, with all due respect , that is just nostalgia and brand loyalty talking , PS2 is the best selling console of all times and DC is just a footnote in gaming history.
Even just imagining the Dreamcast being around for another solid 3-4 years would've been great. So many awesome SEGA arcade games left there because they could not find a home console conversion anywhere else. You're absolutely correct, decisions made by SEGA as far back as 1996-1997 put the DC in such a terrible position that it was doomed way before launch. In the end, I still had some great memories with the console, it's one of my absolute favorite, thanks for the great video!
DVD and EA agreement feels like the two most crucial parts.
But the reputation they got from 32x and saturn was a disaster.
There is are solid engineering reasons why CDs, DVDs and blu-ray disks have a hole and not locating pins to mount the disk. Without the hole a significant portion of the population would not be able to insert or remove a disk without touching the disk surface because their hands are too small. Locating pins would also be small and fragile compared to a spindle mount especially when you consider that there must be some sort of positive locking action to keep the disk in place on top of the spindle.
Surprised I had to scroll so far for this comment.
Dear god, that CD design is going to be insanely difficult to keep from getting scratched. Those 3 spaced out holes seem like they’re going to be incredibly tough for kids and teenagers to hook onto the prongs. Making a CD double sided like a laser disc seems like a good idea until you consider malleability.
fingers being hooked onto holes? come on.
@@AlT-vt3gb haha I have no idea what you are even talking about
@@AlT-vt3gbhe was talking about the 3 small openings needing to get hooked or snapped in. Re-read if u have to dude
"Let's save the dreamcast!"
>Proceeds to remove everything that made the dreamcast so iconic. 🤣
Probably all true though from a business perspective. Great video - cool look into an alternate reality.
👍
The controller mock up is awesome.
it's pretty much a more advanced StrikerDC mixed up with a BrawlerGen by Retro Fighters.
I don’t know man. Katana sounds kinda cringe to me. I didn’t mind the name Dreamcast. I don’t think any Sega console had an issue with bad naming to be fair. I didn’t even mind the name 32X.
Also I would have made the DVD add on more of a side thing, as they could have made a revision Dreamcast in 2001 that was backwards compatible with proper Dreamcast games. The Xbox 360 had the HDdvd thing and that seamed silly. For Sony it made sense as it was perfect timing, but I don’t know how many people wanted add ons on a Sega Machine in 1999. I still have ptsd with my tower of power
Yes Tower of Power trauma was still real? Dont understand why DVDs aren’t in and we are removing internet.
@@otterdonnelly9959 yeah, not sure why removing online worked. I think there were some OK ideas, but the dreamcast did most things right. So it’s hard to really do much about it, the uphill battle was too steep.
I agree! But at least a katana is a real thing that could be interpreted in different ways. Dreamcast is just a made up word lol! But it’s technically light years better than “PlayStation”. Ugh! Ooh, the Sega Light Year! There’s an idea! 😂
@@meekstud are you kidding? This thing could cast dreams. That’s an incredible thing to be able to do. Katana is a terrible name
@@opaljk4835 😄 I don’t like Katana either. But I’m asleep when I’m dreaming; that’s not a good way to make your system seem interesting. “So boring you’ll fall asleep and dream about good games!” I’m surprised that wasn’t a thing back then haha!
Plus, going from Master System, Genesis, Saturn….dream…cast…😬 From names that convey power, scale, and majesty to a made up word about dreams? They could’ve called it the Sega Sheep Counter I guess 🤦🏻♂️😄
I’m just having fun, by the way. I love my Dreamcast and I’d never actually want to change its name. 👍🏻
There's only one thing that could have saved the Dreamcast.
Wild Woody 2.
Changing the Dreamcast name to something as 2000's as "Katana" is a mistake. The Dreamcast name isn't just loved because it's retro, it's a geniunely good name. It's sort of mysterious in a way. Cancelling Shenmue, while it would save a huge amount of money, would be an even bigger mistake in the long run because without Shenmue, there is no Yakuza. Sega would lose what is now one of its Big 3 marquee franchises, even if it took a while for it to get to that point. Cut the budget. Scale Shenmue back if need be. Don't cancel it entirely.
The reality is this is about saving Sega’s console business, not saving the Yakuza franchise that won’t be around until the mid 2000s. If the Dreamcast was successful, Shenmu could be put in production later on, not as a half-assed game with cut content, but as the original vision and it can turn a profit now with an increased user base.
Shenmue is yet the best exp I've ever had in games.
No 2k and no shenmue is pain
No 2K is just illogical, IDK
I hate sports games, they bore me to tears, everything from before and after the dreamcast...2k on the dreamcast though had me.@manuginobilisbaldspot2
The Dreamcast was on track to go toe to toe with the PS2 and was outselling it that first Christmas. It's just the Sega infighting and money woes.
We almost had Tekken Tag on the Dreamcast
To be fair this was due to the extreme PS2 shortages that were occurring but the dreamfast still sold excellent during the Christmas season of 2000 and was literally 0.1% away from overtaking nintendo for 2nd place in market control but the dreamfast while selling decently was still not making sega a profitable company
Sega didn't have big internal conflicts during the Dreamcast era...that was - the birth of Sonic to the Saturn era
@@starstarstar4643 the infighting went on right up to Dreamcast launch. Bernie Stolar did a lot of irreparable damage
I loved the Dreamcast, I got one a few weeks after launch having just turned 14 yo. It was like having the arcade at home, console graphics were finally about on par to Sega Model 3 arcade games (my childhood dream). I remember being blown away by the launch lineup games like Sonic Adventure, House of the Dead 2, Hydro Thunder, and Soul Calibur. I also later got Crazy Taxi and Resident Evil Code Veronica, which also blew my mind.
I think the jump between the Saturn/PS1/N64 to the Dreamcast/PS2/GameCube was the largest in the industry and has never quite happened again.
The Dreamcast didn't fail... Sega failed the Dreamcast.
Still my favorite console. It even has the definitive edition of my favorite game of all time, THPS2.
Dude I was listening to your videos Sega Lord X most of the evening while playing Dreamcast and then in the night when sleeping. Then I wake up and see you posted a new video about Dreamcast, like Magic! You are my favourite gaming channel bro.
I need to sleep sir.
Fine.
Haha same
100% relate 😅
*Lord
Just one more video....
Me on different timezone : 🧑📺
you dragging Yuji Naka is always satisfying and should become a bit, even if he wasn't anywhere near a project lmao
@@earlyriser03 it’s quite clear that Yugi Naka was one of the main problems at Sega as well Hayo Nakayama who ran Sega into the ground with his fostering the toxic culture that existed at Sega imagine if Nintendo had that kind of culture they wouldn’t of survived Eva it’s because everybody had the same vision at Nintendo. It’s why they are still around today.
Naka gets a bad rep for the STI crap but honestly, STI were horrible and their demos were shockingly bad, people grew to like Chris Senn because of his engagement with fans, but tbh Senn was a kid in way over his head, he shouldn't have been anywhere near leading a project like that as a young 20 something.
@@liquidsnake6879 Naka deserves his bad rep because every story we’ve heard about him over the decades confirms he was a brilliant, arrogant jerk. Naka was also “a young 20-something” when Sonic 1, 2, and even 3 launched, and he’s considered one of the principles of Sonic’s creation. In fact, a number of the Sonic team in those days were “young 20-somethings”. Age isn’t the factor you think it is. What matters is ability and resources, and as we definitely know, Naka withheld resources from STI when they tried to create X-Treme.
@@earlyriser03 Yes, he withheld his engine, and clearly had a problem with STI leading the Sonic project, the thing is i can't blame him looking at the demos, it's all horrible.
Their concepts were bad, their cartoon tie-in idea was bad, introducing characters like Tiara Boobowski was bad, the fisheye cameras were bad i could go on.
Naka never showed disrespect to Traveler's Tales for example, only to STI because only STI ran around like headless chickens in way over their heads.
I dare even say if Sonic Xtreme had come out, based on what i've seen and experienced from all the demos available, Sonic Adventure wouldn't have happened because Sonic as a franchise would've died with the Saturn, like Shinobi.
And that's before considering they were going up against Crash Bandicoot and Mario 64 lol
Sonic would've been so far beneath those two that it would've just buried SEGA even more
@@liquidsnake6879 and just like that, your age argument evaporates…
You have a very clear bias against STI. At least you refocus the argument on what actually matters: ability and resources. If their concepts needed work, they should have been fostered. If they had zero potential, then they deserved to be let go. However, it’s interesting that you fail to mention part of STI’s overarching concept, the perspective and level design in Xtreme, eventually materialized in Sonic Lost World...
In any case, talent should receive guidance from the more experienced, not be disrespected as you seemingly believe was justified. Especially when those doing the disrespecting produced later efforts like Balan while partaking in a little insider trading. Whoops…
Obviously it wasn’t just Naka, as it was part of a greater toxic company culture, but he absolutely leaned into it and took outsized credit for efforts he had little to no involvement with. I’ll never fault Naka for making decisions that protected Sonic’s integrity. It’s his attitude that was always the problem.
If you’re going to continue to excuse and justify Naka to me while piling on a team of devs that were trying to chart new territory for an established franchise, then that is your right. Just know I’ll drop my civility and respond with mockery from here on.
I love these "Let's Save" videos. I hope he's over there compiling a list of these for future videos. When I was in college, a few friends of mine and I would have sessions where we'd speculate over past game consoles and would sit around and talk about what the developers could have done to keep them relevant and profitable indefinitely. They'd always be submerged in concepts and ideas we were so sure were BS at that time,but seems to all have come to fruition. I remember one of my friends would always say, "One day, people are going to start playing retro games again and it's going to create a society of individuals that just love talking about old Atari, NES, SNES, and Genesis games and consoles." We'd always laugh because it seemed those consoles were so far behind us at that point, and nobody would ever find a reason to cling to them like we did. However, every time I watch one of these, I think about us sitting around our apartments dreaming up crazy ideas to rejuvenate interest in retro consoles.
Great video as always. I'm looking forward to more of these from you.
I'd say
1: Use DVD instead of the propietary discs.
2: Get GTA 3.
3: Don't waste millions on Shenmue, reduce the scope, the whole first game can't be what in a movie would be the first 20 minutes, the "call to adventure", the part where "something happens that makes the hero start his journey and go on adventure" should be the beginning, not the whole game. That part should have been over in one or two hours, by hour two the hero should have been getting off the boat in the new city to properly start the adventure. Shenmue 1 should have covered several chapters of the whole story the director had planned, and Shenmue 2 should have ended it. Worst case scenario, plan the whole thing to fit in a trilogy.
4: try to get a better console version of Diablo 1 and the exclusive console version of Diablo 2.
5: port Virtua Fighter 4 to the system.
6: ¿try to get tekken? ¿some mortal kombat newer than 4? ¿maybe shaolin monks because it's arcadey, make it four player co op to have an advantage over the ps2 version?.
7: make sequels of all the famous and loved Genesis/Megadrive franchises. Recover the Sega identity Saturn lost.
GTA 3 was actually initially prototyped on the Dreamcast (confirmed by Rockstar dev who worked on the game). It didn't get very far, only a few months before development shifted to PS2 due to changing market conditions. Same as other big IP's, titles were being cancelled due to the Dreamcast's poor sales and Sega's financial issues.
If Sega and the Dreamcast performed better, we probably would have had GTA 3 on the DC as well.
Not only GTA 3, But you'll need a port of DBZ: Budokai as well.
Edit: Also make Sega GT into the Gran Turismo killer it should of been to keep Kaz on his toes
The problem with sequels to Genesis franchises is that the team that would be developping those titles were hard at work on similarly good titles like crazy taxi, Skies of arcadia, Jet set radio, Shenmue. So yeah instead of Shenmue we would have had something else.
The real problem was the size of the team and the too few outside developers bringing new stuff on the console.
It’s funny you mention wanting Sega to port Tekken as a few years ago Katsuhiro Harada (Director of most Tekken titles) said that Sega approached him and Namco to port Tekken Tag Tournament 1 to the Dreamcast Instead of the PS2 (if this did go ahead Sega would offer a Virtua Fighter character as a Guest Character). But, Harada and Namco said no (I’m not sure what their reasonings were).
I liked a lot of your ideas, but a “DVD add on” was a terrible idea. Add ons never work, (Xbox media remote, 360 HD-DVD drive, 32X, PSVR etc) so I’m really surprised you think that was a viable missed opportunity. I think the bigger miss was using GD-Rom media, they should’ve just used DVD media, period.
Family Computer Disk System is still the most successful console add-on.
I love the Dreamcast just the way it was!
The way it IS. It’s still alive m8, at least for me. 😂 it’s dope and It’s fun collecting such great games for it.
It needed a DVD drive, and the controller needed to be a DualShock clone like all modern pads are, but with the VMU and analogue triggers. Basically needed to be the OG Xbox pad with a VMU in the middle. Microsoft fixed the Dreamcast controller.
Games-wise, it wasnt bad for hardcore gamers, but for more casual gamers it seriously needed a good football/soccer simulation game. Not having Pro Evo and FIFA just made the console a complete no-go for many millions of Europeans and South Americans.
I had many friends who looked at the graphics on my Dreamcast, and basically said "It looks amazing. Imagine how great PES/FIFA would be on it?". They would ultimately stick with their PS1/N64 until PS2 released.
I always believed that charging $250 for the DC instead of $199 would have been a better move. It made Sega lose money they couldn't afford to at the time and I don't think $50 would have slowed down sales as it was still a good price. Also, maybe removing the dial-up modem would have been better as broadband was gaining ground in the US at the time. People could buy it the adapter that worked for them separately which would also help Sega from losing too much money.
You can blame Bernie Stoliar for that. Sega of Japan wanted to sell the Dreamcast in the states at an RSVP of $249.99. But Bernie disobeyed that decision and had the Dreamcast sold for $199.99. Every DC was sold at a $50 loss and it pissed Sega of Japan off big time; resulting in Bernie Stoliar's Termination and being replaced with Peter Moore.
My family was very cheap at the time so I’m glad they went with the lower price. It showed that they learned their mistakes from the Saturn era.
@@filipmartinez1162 Yes, but since it may have helped kill the console it can be argued that paying $200 for a console that lasted 1.5 years is a much lesser value than paying more for a console that might have had a full lifespan.
One thing to remember is that when the Dreamcast launched, in '98, the single biggest selling console was the PS1 - which by now you could pick up less than $100. The PS1 kept selling WELL into the PS2's era, so I suspect Sega was trying to compete with the lower priced console as well...
@@dtester All kids had to do was know about it and they had an arcade quality system for 200$. Gamers just didn’t do their homework back then or were blindly loyal to Sony, they had potential to sell more with the lower pricepoint.
Im glad the Dreamcast died for our sins. Had it come out 2 years later it would have been a generic fourth leg in the 6th gen console war. Came out in the middle of a huge leap from 5th and 6th gen and was knocking out arcade ports during the last few years of the great arcade era.
Xbox was only made because Dreamcast died. Microsoft didn't want to compete if there were 3 other companies making consoles.
I wrote this before watching the video. I quite like your ideas, especially the technical bit and also agree on Shenmue not coming out.
- Not hire Bernie Stolar
- Not quit supporting the Saturn so soon
- Release Shenmue on the Saturn with Shenmue 2 on the Dreamcast
- Forgo any proprietary media format
- Approach Microsoft to publish their MS Studios games on the Dreamcast
- Not abandon the 8-button controllers, with a slight evolution of the Saturn's pads, both 3D and regular, and have dual analogs
- Skip the VMU and make it a simpler memory card situation like the PS1, on the console itself instead of the controllers
- Skip the online early
- Bring all of the 1990s Sega arcade games home!
DVD out of box support would have been a Solution, the DC Controller fit my hands correctly, the D-Pad Felt like the Genesis.
Great points. I also hold firm to the sentiment that if the 32X didnt exist, then the Saturn and the Dreamcast wouldnt have become commercial failures. The 32X wasnt the only real disaster that Sega had but it was definitely 1 of the top 3 disasters. It caused so much destruction to the company.
I wouldn't have agreed with this until that leak came out. Its a painful thing to admit, but Kevin K killed SEGA with the 32X and Sony simply took SEGA's spot as Nintendo's rival during the 32x but era.
@@novelezra yeah, people sometimes give the Sega CD a bad rep, and I admit that the Sega CD didnt do Sega any favors, but at the same time, it isnt what catapulted Sega into catastrophe. The 32X is what made the company almost go bankrupt even sooner than it did.
@@thechosenone2123 Hearing that they literally had warehouses full of the things is just painful. It was literally weighing them down and it's no surprise that SEGA Japan lost faith
I dunno about that. People love to argue about hardware and marketing and competition but the the bottom line is a particular console needs a really strong library of games. Thats why the NES killed and the SNES murdered and why the N64 slapped like a toddler with palsy.
The Genesis had an OK line of games and everything after was unimpressive. Allegedly the Playstation was much easier to develop games for and part of the reason so many companies went in that direction. And it had an excellent library of games.
I would even say if the Sega CD didn’t exist then the Saturn and Dreamcast would have had a much better chance of succeeding.
I'm really a fan of the amount of work and thought that you put into these. Thank you for doing these love letters to the consoles and games we all love. I don't know how often you get to hear it, but your videos are a source of joy and happiness for those of us who share your love and passion for these games/systems/companies. Thank you.
If this was the Dreamcast we got, I’m afraid I wouldn’t want it.
Not sure what his issue is with the name Dreamcast and no 2K games? No Shenmue?..yeah I wouldn't want it either
@@starstarstar4643it makes sense with hindsight and business sense, but turns it into a gray blob console. If they changed the company culture to the extent proposed, it just wouldn’t be something I’m interest in. I’m glad Sega is still around and still a bit weird. With or without consoles.
He is right about the controller. The Dreamcast controller was an awkward mess. All they had to do was add two joysticks to the 6 button Sega Saturn controller.
@@auditoryproductions1831 I don’t think it’s an awkward mess, that’s debatable. I think it’s very comfortable to use and love the layout of it, even the wire at the bottom and VMU screen. The additional joystick would be the only thing that feels like its missing.
@@Wil_Dsensei agree it really depends on your comfort. Some people love the n64 controller and I dont see why. Its just a pref. I mean all of this said the real new dreamcast was the original xbox😅😊
the main reason the Dream Died is sony had lots of cash from ps1 to dump it in ps2 marketing and hardware. and they hyped it like anything
The Katana name wouldn't have worked in the UK. We had the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles renamed to Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles for a start. Wouldn't matter these days though as we've accepted Ninja for a long time. Back then it was an offensive word so i doubt Katana would even have been legal
Sega AM3 would be a better name, and postponing the launch for 6 months to port all AM2 games to it, as well as including a Sonic with it. Then after launch work on Streets of Rage 2, Eternal Champions, Streets of Rage, Ecco, etc. As well as securing the EA deal.
@@unassailable6138 I like the name Dreamcast but this is a hot take and probably an unpopular opinion. The Dreamcast is my least favourite Sega console.
@@Terra-Hawk I'm starting to think he was the only one that hated the name Dreamcast
migh've helped them survive a little longer. 9-9-99 is forever engrained in my mind, like Mortal Monday
once everyone realized you could just rent games and them burn them (most of them) to CDR which plays in the dreamcast just fine, it was the final nail for the dreamcast. they sold too many units before they fixed that.
We saved the Turbo Grafx Sega CD 32X Saturn and 3DO now it’s time to save the Dreamcast
Waiting for the "Save the Atari Jaguar" and "Save the CD-i" videos
I'm not sure about the *DVD* in addition to the *Modem* _being add-ons..._
Too many "add-on" shenanigans lead to consumer confusion, and to the perception the console doesn't really have those features. For example, the Saturn also had all manners of add-ons, including modem, and they never took off. Sony with all their marketing could never get the PS Move (Wiimote derivative) to take off.
This to say that a console is defined by *what it packs in out-of-the-box,* and that was ever truer in an era where mass internet adoption still hadn't fully taken off, and thus consumers were often misinformed, and rumors and word-of-mouth would often mislead people. Heck, people are mislead today -- a time where everyone has the entire internet in their smartphones -- and they would be even more mislead back then.
Let's not forget how the initial investment for a console already creates "investment exhaustion" and the thing people will be eager to buy after that will be games.... BUT with people also having to buy an extra controller or 2, and memory cards/ VMUs, that already creates enough "consumer anxiety". And with people having to buy even 2 more add-ons in order to have the "full experience".... I just don't see those add-ons ever taking off tbh.
I'm not saying the strategies here aren't good (most of them in fact, are great) but delegating DVD and Modem to an add-on will not make this console be seen as "the internet console" (like the Dreamcast was) or as the "the DVD console" like the PS2 was -- and marketing strategies are often based on "memes" and word of mouth, which this doesn't help create. We need a slightly different approach, or at least some mechanism that will have the audience both informed about internet and DVD, and EAGER to buy them. Heck, if the 2 could be combined into a single, simple to acquire and setup, add-on, the better.
The way he changed the way the discs worked would have been a really bad idea. Shoehorning a way to play dvds when you can't do it out of the box is not a good way to go. This gives off Sega CD syndrome.
I agree with this concern, and there’s another one that wasn’t addressed. If Sega wanted to publish X-men vs. Street Fighter, Marvel vs. Street Fighter and Street Fighter Alpha 3 in the USA in 1998? That involves manufacturing and selling an additional piece of hardware - a much bigger gamble than just pressing discs. I don’t think US consumer would have wanted to purchase an add-on for their Saturn late in its life.
@@LampHatScottYes, and I think the DVD add-on would simply replace it as the method of piracy since it would need to be compatible with normal shaped discs.
Yeah DVD should have been built in and I’d be ok with the modem add on tho
I agree, didn't save HD DVD via the Xbox 360 despite greatly outselling PS3 it's first few years
I was so so hyped for a Dreamcast I imported one just to play MVC, HOTD 2 and sonic. I don’t regret a single thing about my decision. I had so much fun and was a fighting game junkie at the time which filled that cavity like no other system.
Somewhere in another universe, Sega Lord X owns Sega Enterprises & has completely took over the video games industry. Man I wish because I miss my Sega Genesis, 32X, Sega CD, Saturn and Dreamcast (er Katana) LMAO!
The Dreamcast is the prime example of a work of art in gaming that still never was financially successful enough to last. That gaming is history worth preserving no matter how it did. I will never forget that 2-3 years of loving the family dreamcast.
Fact of the matter was when the PS2 and gamecube came out it was over. Also for me PC was becoming a dream come true around then with the amount of things you could do that consoles just simply didn't have.
A man can dream!
Oh man, I kinda knew Sega was in trouble at my young age then, but I had for sure thought the Dreamcast was absolutely amazing and gonna keep them hanging on. Lots of my friends and I had a Dreamcast!
Simple, Add a DVD drive, A cheap DVD player was what a lot of PS2 owners were after.
@@heilong79 part true. The true downfall of the Dremacast was piracy
You bet! Count me in as one of 'em 👍 That built-in I.R. receiver made it a ton of fun when used with the actual remote.
Except, DVDs players were not dirt cheap back in the late 90s, and Sega was not financially healthy to afford the greater expenses of DVD technology.
Sega would need to negotiate with a division of Sony for DVD rights to begin with, so this was never likely from the get-go.
@@kabbusses I thought DVDs were a toshiba thing....
I love how you always breathe life into this console and stir up so much nostalgia!
I skipped school to get the Dreamcast on launch
Dreamcast holds special place in my mind. It was one I always wanted but couldn’t afford
Love the nostalgia trips you produce SLX ! Keep it up.
Bro just call it the Dreamcast lmao
Y'know, those what-if scenarios are so compelling to think of, I just caught myself thinking "hey, imagine if we had a hybrid of Game Dev Tycoon and PC Building Simulator where you deal with the whole business of creating a console from the ground up". Like all the way from research and planning hardware up to the marketing, launch and post-sales. We could literally mess around with all of those parameters just for kicks and see how things could've played out.
If there's any game devs who follow this channel and are reading this, it's up for grabs ;)
Sega Lord X never heard of a LP 45 adapter :p
I think having to have 2 drives is just another SEGA CD mistake.
That controller would have been sick tho...
SEGA NET was one of the best things about Dreamcast. If Sega wasn't so broke it would have given them a huge head start. They should have partnered with Microsoft from day one.
The fact that you don't ask for a "like and subscribe" makes me go outta my way to make sure I like everything you do
I remember wanting a dreamcast but waiting for PS2 because it had a free DVD player.
@@everythingmainecooncat4938 the PS2 was washed away over the Dreamcast, which I was never interested in that then I rate the GameCube better than the Dreamcast
Ngl, i would find the “3 small holes” disc annoying to fit in the spindle
I don't blame Sega for investing in heavily in online game. Sega needed something to differentiate themselves to get people excited. The brand was so tarnished, releasing a vanilla Sega system wasn't going to cut it.
Dreamcast was almost perfectly executed. Agreed that 2k sports and Shenmue were the only slip ups, but wouldn't have made enough difference anyway. The VC deal made more sense in the context of online gaming as well, so not a completely terrible decision. Shenmue was a mistake though.
Bernie Stolar doesn't get enough credit for the Dreamcasts short lived success. The only thing that could have saved the Dreamcast was to undo the many, many major mistakes made before it.
The Dreamcast is still my first or second favorite console of all time. It still has the best launch lineup ever when it came to the U.S. on 9.9.99!
Let's go Dreamcast!
Ah, the POWER of hindsight
I would have simply put the development of Shenmue on a hiatus until Katana has a large install base. Similar to how you changed the SegaNet strategy.
Also, I think Dreamcast is a way cooler name, personally. I have no nostalgic attachment since I was born 3 years after the Dreamcast was discontinued.
My all time number 1 Console! Love it!
I love the name Dreamcast. Katana doesn't sound (family)friendly. Also love the online as a sales strategy. It was just implemented badly. I don't know if the proposed EA would be better than what we got.
I like your cd idea. Fast dvd add on would be good too. Baldur's Gate was licensed and in production by SEGA, but was cancelled. I agree that the US release must be postponed. The European launch much support far more countries. In most markets it was almost ignored from the get go.
Star Craft with online cross platform play against the PC would have been a must buy game for strategy fans.
Sega is a funny company, it had all these great games but where are they today? Nintendo has so many games that can trace their roots back to the NES era. How many games does Sega have that never got a sequel or continued to be relevant?
Yakuza? Extremely popular game that isn't sonic. Sega still produces awesome games.
Back in 2002 I turned 18 years old, had my first real job, and was ready to graduate to a different console than my N64. I didn’t really mind going with either the Dreamcast or the PlayStation 2. But at the time, I needed a DVD player (just like most other people on the planet who could afford a console) so I went with the PlayStation. It wouldn’t have mattered if the Dreamcast had the option for an additional DVD add on. That was more money and something I had to purchase separately. Having it built in (like the PS) for the price was just too tempting to pass up for the general consumer.
My brother went with the Dreamcast. Since we lived in the same home, I got to play both systems often. Although the Dreamcast seemed to have better graphics overall, it wasn’t enough to counter act the much larger library of games available on the PS at the time. My DVD drive failed twice over the following few years and had to be sent to Sony for repair. As I got older, I did come to appreciate the novelty of many of the Dreamcast titles and ended up buying one for myself. Definitely have a place in my heart for Sega, they were a company who put out many unique and fun products. Unfortunately it wasn’t the names of the consoles, controller design, or titles like Shenmue that did them in, it was the constant internal conflict between Sega of America and Sega of Japan. “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” -Jesus Christ
Don't forget, if this theoretical Katana were still on the market when Xbox & GC drop, Sega's not going to be porting their stuff to those consoles. A pretty decent chunk of Microsoft's JP developed library is now wiped out. I don't think it would affect Nintendo quite as much though.
Fun fact sonic adventure 2 battle and sonic heroes sold over 5 million units combined on a system that sold 22 million units
Segas presence missing from the GameCube and especially xbox would considerably harm the two systems not to mention alot of Xbox exclusives originally started out as dreamcast exclusives that were canceled with death of the system
Finally! This is what we have been waiting for. Lets go!!
"Proprietary CD format"
This is not the way 😂
I personally thought the Swirl logo and Dreamcast name were awesome. It felt more mature and defined, and that opening bios screen *chef kiss*.
Well first we gotta save the Saturn
He made that video a while ago. But of course, in those videos, he does not build on top of other fantasy scenarios, otherwise it'd really stray way too far away from reality to be interesting.
your channel has been a consistent source of comfort during tough times for years now - thank you :-)
The name was never an issue.
I didn't have a dreamcast as a kid. My neighbor did though. but 9.9.99 is still burned into my brain after all these years. that truly was one of the best marketing decisions ever
Save the Dreamcast. Simple. Never ship the 32X.
Dreamcast would have to come with built in DVD drive in order to have any hope of countering PS2 hype. Having DVD as $149.99 peripheral is a nonstarter.
I couldn’t disagree more about the EA part and getting rid of their sports titles. It seems like you didn’t really play them a lot. They were the biggest pluses and some of the biggest reasons to buy a Dreamcast. If you get rid of those you get rid of a lot of Dreamcast users, most likely me included. The sports titles are what sold me on the console.
Have to say, Sega was ahead of their time. Sad that they dropped out. Always loved their consoles.
@@aaronsnowden6311 Sega were forced to drop out of the console race in order to survive thanks to their blenders and the failure of the Saturn as well as the Sega CD and 32X I would say the latter two were mistakes and should never have been made and I feel it should’ve gone to Nintendo route by using add on chips in their cartridges which would’ve made a world of difference especially maybe for extra sound channels maybe for extra voice samples in fact Sega of America actually did that with the Joe Montana series with the sportstalk technology Even if it did sound like a speak and spell lol
The only thing I am not personally sure if is the disk format. Having that thing in the center is of disks and connect with small bits sticking up is just a point of failure waiting to happen. But the rest of it, I am on board with.
Not gonna lie I really enjoy this concept. Thanks for putting in the time and effort for these!
I disagree with a few things:
Keep SegaNet. Expand online. No reason PSO shouldn’t be as huge in the west. I think it could’ve had the position Monster Hunter has, earlier. And bring online MvC2/CvS2 to the West.
Keep Dreamcast name. Way better than Katana. Black Belt is better than Katana as well but Dreamcast was perfect.
We aren’t canceling Shenmue, that was definitely something that should be managed better and focused on more to be the true showcase it was always meant to be.
Play DVDs. I think it would’ve helped Sega last for at least another console gen and we would’ve seen a successor to fight PS3/360/Wii.
I will add that Sega needed a backcompat program for Saturn games and a company focus of localizing Japanese games properly and respectfully internally and uncensored. No reason why Atlus games didn’t have a home base on Dreamcast.
I agree
They were that close to win the lottery with Online.
World of Warcraft managed to crack the code and made billions because millions of players poured into this MMO experience and kept paying their licence out of habit.
That's frustrating that it didn't work for Sega, PSO had a huuuuge potential for that (and today even though the serie doesn't break the video game industry, it is said to have brought Sega a Billion dollars according to their own records so yeah, they managed to turn a profit)
Backwards compatibility on Dreamcast for Saturn would have been impossible without adding hardware and complicating the system. That's how PS2 did it. It didn't have the processing power to emulate them.
@@joshuasanderson7359 ok…would still be more appreciated than a dvd add-on. Would’ve brought more eyes to the Japanese Saturn library that also would’ve been brought over. We are all spitballing.
Considering the multiverse, I would imagine the alpha-verse got the Katana and Dolphin consoles
Since Dreamcast was launched way earlier than PS2, Xbox and GameCube, I would give Dreamcast internal expansion slots. 16 MB of RAM was enough at launch, but it should have a slot to increase RAM to 32 MB or even 128 MB few years later, when RAM prices dropped significantly. Dreamcast should also have IDE connector for HDD. Similar situation to RAM, HDDs were quickly evolving. Growing from 8 GB up to 80 GB in just 3-5 years.
1998-2002 is the time when gaming hardware changed the most. 1998 was a time of early 3D accelerators with Fixed-pipeline, while in late 2002 Radeon 9700 was released and it was (almost) capable of Xbox 360 and PS3 graphics!
The only way for Dreamcast to survive against Sony, Nintendo and Xbox was to have hardware that can be improved with time. I know this didn't worked with Sega Genesis, but Amiga was able to be relevant up to 2005, despite its hardware being from 1992-1994. Amiga had so strong community, that 3rd party companies were designing Turbo add-ons and ways to install next-gen PC hardware, like 3D accelerators.
Sega could also play dirty. Instead of using DVD. They could add DivX support. Movie piracy was massive in early 2000's. In my country DVD players were promoted by ability to play DivX and other codecs. Keep in mind that Xbox was able to copy music from CDs into its HDD. Affordable Dreamcast that has a CD drive that is able to play DivX movies would sell really well.
Though I had DVD drive in my 2001 PC, I've never really used it. Games were releasing on CDs for so long, that eventually I've got DVD-RW drive and my 2001 PC wasn't good enough to run new games released on DVDs.
More upgradeability options are super fascinating. We might have had arcade perfect ports of Naomi titles. The whole time period is peak gaming for me.
Once you get this controller in hands, you'll be happy player for 30 minutes then you need to rest your hands.
Hardware like this is easy to improve to sell it again, sega would add second stick to a new revision of gamepads easily, the main problem is that Dreamcast discontinued entirely.
But just by looking at the ergonomics of this modern Dreamcast + Saturn controller makes me horrified. Dreamcast controller was on heck of the cute tech. This looks monstrous
If the Dreamcast was a success, we probably wouldn't have had the Xbox come on the scene in the same way. Partnering with Microsoft might have been an option that would have been open had Sega asked about it considering the Windows CE support. Also, if the EA deal fell apart over the PowerVR implementation and the sports titles. So 50/50 they would come back still going with PowerVR hardware?
Tbh it was doomed from the start. The only reason it got off the ground was because a dying man loaned Sega hundreds of millions then essentially absolved the debt. There was more to it but it was being held together by glue and popsicle sticks, basically.
Did I know all this in 99 when I bought mine? Absolutely not, and I still love the damn thing
@@DCMCOSPLAYdotCOM if I were running Sega one of the first things I’ve done back then is fire Nakayama and get rid of Yugi Naka who was toxic and Yama presided over the toxic Japanese culture at Sega of Japan and I will never forgive him for the premature discontinuation of the mega drive.
If memory serves, the swirly Dreamcast symbol was meant to mimic the '@' symbol and invoke ideas of internet connectivity