The Inexplicable Death of the Sega Dreamcast
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- Опубліковано 9 кві 2021
- I go through the reasons why I think the Sega Dreamcast never stood a chance at success.
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Opening 3D Logo By:
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Opening 2D Animation By:
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Episode Notes:
1. This one was in the oven for a VERY LONG time. I hope you enjoy it!
2. I chose the title of the video for a specific reason. Hindsight details the death of the Dreamcast with 20 years of consideration. At the time, however, it seemed like its failure was a complete mystery to the average Sega fan.
3. Every game in this episode captured on original hardware.
4. I still have hopes for a DC Mini someday. Sega released the Astro City Mini, so anything is possible.
5. Remember, these points are all meant to be taken as a whole. One thing leads to another. One thing affects another. The DC being released in Japan in 1998 meant no DVD because of expense. However, should the DC not have been released early in Japan, Saturn goes strong another year there AND DVD becomes more affordable. Piracy becomes less an issue. They still beat Sony to the US market by a year. It all plays together. - Ігри
The Dreamcast had a short lifespan but Naomi board was one of the most successful arcade platforms ever.
The Dreamcast Naomi wasn’t the same as the arcade version. The Jamma version was essentially two Naomi boards compared to the Dreamcast one Naomi.
Naomi arcade stuff is very expensive nowadays, I want Ikaruga badly!
@@dirtmerchant4718 Well, it has the same architecture, which is why Naomi arcade ports were aplenty. There was a near perfect port of a Virtua Fighter game on Dreamcast, if I recall.
@@CarlosXPhone Far from perfect. I have both versions. The arcade has more colors, polygons than the Dreamcast version. It played great but, it lacked in detail compared to the arcade version. The model 3 has a more powerful gpu, and more ram.
@@dirtmerchant4718 You said that most Naomi arcades have two Naomis, while dreamcast is only one Naomi board, I don't get why you're arguing with me? It's not like Dreamcast was going to get a perfect port. I said near perfect for a reason. It plays the game as it was, just not 100% for obvious reasons.
Shenmue was another factor. It was an extremely ambitious project, and Sega poured all their resources into making it happen. It was the most expensive game ever made for its time, by a considerable margin. While it sold a fairly respectable 1.2 million copies, and became a cult classic, it never made back its budget. The game that was supposed to save the DC just pushed Sega even deeper into debt. But we did eventually get Yakuza out of it, in a roundabout way, so there's that.
soj being stupid yet again. lets make an expensive flagship title that lacks high excitement. shenmue is one of my favorite games but its funny sega designated shenmue as the console seller. its a niche game.
It is my understanding that even if it had sold at a ratio of 1:1 for every console they EVER made, it still would have been well short of breaking even. The game would have needed to generate a LOT more system sales to have been worth the investment. Even if they never made back their investment on that specific game, it could have been worth it if it had driven console sales to the point where it also indirectly drove more sales of OTHER games as a result... But it wasn't even close, sadly. Sega was at such a huge disadvantage at this point, it didn't really matter if they did everything right, though there was probably some sliver of a chance if a few of their games had exploded in popularity to a really extreme degree.
They needed something equivalent to Pokeman for the Gameboy, but for their home console, but they probably needed to have more than just one amazing system selling game in order to generate enough business and market share for them to stay profitable in the console market. While we typically assume that a game has to be a great game to be a great system seller... it just needs to strike a cord with the general public to generate massive popular demand. They basically needed to either get really lucky with a few runaway hits that exceeded all expectations, or travel to the future with a time machine and kidnap a bunch of the best game developers and bring them back to the late 90's to make a few really good games for them.
Success was extremely improbable for them at this point in time, sadly.
It was just a overblown vanity product for yu Suzuki that cost tons of money and would never have made it's budget back never mind turned a profit .dull as hell by the time I got to the forklift races I was done and never bothered to finish it.
And it was originally developed for the saturn. As usual, Sega canceled, what would have been a commercially successful port and spent millions moving the whole project to the next console. Everyone by this point had seen Sega do this over and over again, discontinuing over $2,000 worth of hardware that they'd asked you to buy.
"The Saturn is not our future."
Except it lasted twice as long as the Dreamcast.
And had a better library .
@@carlosaugustodinizgarcia3526 I'll more versatile gaming library than the dreamcast. However the dreamcast was the better console except for controller designs. I prefer Saturn controller than the dreamcast.
SLX: "thank you, Bernie Stolar. You completely ruined it. Good job, dude!👍 ".
I don't see how this is a contradiction; VHS had a long life, but it's not the future.
@@rossoreilly05
I'd say it was more about timing. you aren't wrong, but the thing is he said it when it was rumored that he was to keep face on the saturn, and abandoned it openly.
and the wordign could be better too, such as "we have big plans for the future, but lets not forget our plans for the current big hitter, the saturn. its vastly underappreciated and I look forward to the big hits gravitating towards it."
its not always what you say but how you say it. and when.
The PS2 doubling as a DVD Player was the killer for the Dreamcast in my opinion. If it had also been a DVD Player who knows how things would have turned out.
I was just about to type that. Ps2 was ok as a gaming platform. But that damn thing sold based as a dvd player.
Sony took a massive loss on the ps2 hardware also, the only difference is they could afford to...
And it would have added up to $200 to the price - maybe slightly less, maybe even slightly more. Would the Dreamcast have sold more, or less as a result.
It's possible it was just inevitable that Sega was leaving, the targets that Sega needed to hit to stop haemorrhaging money were insane and practically impossible even with the low cost, high quality innovative console with great games.
Sega did release a Dreamcast and dvd player combo in a single box in the UK at one point I remember it well. Cost £299 if I remember rightly and was a Panasonic dvd player can't remember if it was bundled with games and vmu or not
PS2's sales figures are quite off the charts. And yes, it was that darned DVD player. Only the Gameboy series (adding up all iterations) can even come close to the number of PS2's sold. It's quite impressive that a videogame console sold so well for non-videogame reasons. I think in general gamers need to keep this in mind when they worry about graphics and such features...if it's gonna succeed, it needs to step out of the bubble of tech fettishism and think of a larger market.
I was a kid and mad as hell about what happened with the Dreamcast now as a 37 year old man I still feel sadness an amazing console and on my free time I still dive into it's library for a little fun memory lane action.
You and me both (I'm 38)... I'm still sad about the fate of the Dreamcast. I couldn't understand why people didn't buy it, but a lot of people just waited for the PS2 due to brand recognition. When the PS2 was released people in my local video game store tried to convince themselves that the graphics were better on the PS2 although the showcase was Dead or Alive 2 (which had a much better dreamcast version). Weird times and a sad fate for the Dreamcast. I am impressed by the hardware even today... Perhaps one day I will start programming on it. It would be a lot of fun to see what it is capable of.
@@PixelShade Dreamcast launch title lineup was far superior to PS2.
I'm 37 and had this. It's just the PS1 was so dominant and the PS2 was so near as well. The DC didn't have those BIG games like Gran Turismo, Tomb Raider, FF and FIFA - those were all cultural touchstones and the DC just couldn't compete. Maybe if Xbox didn't have Halo it would have gone the same way?
36 here and damn there was something just magical about the Dreamcast … yes it had a short life span but damn the memories that I accrued in just the year I had it , wow … I still remember walking into one of my friends house and seeing him play NFL 2k1 I had never seen anything like it … beautiful console
@@PixelShade Because we'd felt screwed by SEGA after the $300 Sega CD, $180 32X, and dozens of crapy and lazy ports for each. The Master System and Genesis got the chance to show their cops. Hell, the bone stock Genesis was capable of going head to head with some PS1 launch titles, and the Sega CD was an absolute powerhouse. Yet most of the games released for their addons were terrible. Now SEGA was moving up the Saturn launch to May, killing the Genesis. We were supposed to buy this expensive behemoth, and we were broke!
The Sega CD and the proposed $49.99 SVP cart would've been the sweet spot, and that's what buyers were clamoring for. I loved the 25 MIPS DSP in Virtua Racing!
I find it funny that EA would rather develop games for the Apple Pippin (a machine that only sold 42,000 units) than to make games for the Dreamcast.
ΕΑ was paid by Sony to reject Sega.
@@vasileios6301 source?
Thats why ill buy a series x, dirty sony ;)
@Kevin Michaud lol
@@brux357 Ask Trip Hawkins
This video is painful to watch. Sega being out of the hardware and even software business is still painful in 2021. So many great games, so many wonderful franchises, so many memories all dead. Even today Sega doesn't do much to push their games forward and it sucks.
Absolutely correct they don't do nothing !!! So many good games they made over the years that could be remake with our current powerful console !! But don't do anything !!! Boy they are stupid !!!
They do nothing but continue to release awesome arcade games, which has always been their bread and butter.
Nowadays all Sega cares about is Yakuza series and... can't remember anything else they develop nowadays
@@alex.starostin Plants vs Zombies arcade, House of the Dead series, Transformers, Luigi's Mansion, Daytona USA, Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games, Sonic and Sega All Stars racing. I could easily go on, but shame you can't name anything else but Yakuza lmao.
@@supersanic1254 Actually, I tried looking up the info you brought up actually, Sega didn't develop Luigi's Mansion Arcade: Capcom did. But it was released on the Sega Nu board. Same with Plants vs Zombies Aracde: the actual developers were PopCap, but it was released on a Sega system.
But that's the thing: I had to actually look up these games because I never even knew that there were arcade versions of Plants vs Zombies and Luigi's Mansion. Likewise, I had no idea Sega had developed a Transformers arcade game. Fact of the matter is, arcades just don't have the clout they once did.
What really sucks is that Sega really tried to correct all of their previous mistakes by making the Dreamcast amazing. Unfortunately years and years of mistakes finally caught up to them.
I've felt the same. Dreamcast was outstanding but was never given a chance and was doomed from the start. Dreamcast was the sacrificial lamb that paid for past systems failures.
This.
Jeremy Seal: SEGA forgot to correct one of their most important mistakes- Arcades were no longer popular. Notice how the most popular games at the time- Mario 64, Metal Gear, Zelda, Spyro etc were not Arcade games.
@@vulcanraven9701 I never thought of it that way. But that is why SEGA will always be one of a kind. It just went down with the rest of that world.
The problem is that, from 1991-2001, SEGA kept doing the exact same thing: release brand new, expensive hardware, but then offer rushed titles, lackluster support, and spent millions on canceled titles--or even refusing to bring over popular Japanese games. Those who'd invested hundreds into Sega hardware quickly learned that the company would, once again, screw over its customers for no rhyme nor reason. And Sega enthusiasts were taught a painful lesson: Never buy Sega hardware ever.
22 years on and no regrets, I still have mine.
You got to experience the two best years any single console ever had. Dreamcast 99-01.
The DC is my favourite Sega console, so far ahead of its time. It was the main console my mates & I used to play.
The console is even better now that you can play Atomiswave games on it!
Booted mine up the other day weirdly enough, got my brother in law to play powerstone 2 with me. It was a blast.
Haha same still got mine
I dont have the one we got back in the 00s
But I got 45-50 games and a Japanese console
Funny enough, after seeing the Dreamcast at my friends house, I knew there and then that arcades will soon die out. Everything about the Dreamcast blew me away.
The Dreamcast was amazing in its day. My friend had one and we played Virtua Tennis, Sonic Adventure, MDK, and Power Stone endlessly. It was definitely smoother in a way than other consoles graphically at the time, it’s a shame it never got as much software support.
Such classic games! Can't recall how many hours my buddy and I burned on those exact titles
Marvel vs Capcom sword of Berserk,
Bernie Stoler also cancelled the Dreamcast iteration of Streets Of Rage 4 because he never even heard of the series.
Well, SOJ ruined Saturn by ignoring SOA's plans with Sonyn then Silicon Graphics (the exact chip that eventually went into the N64), and then ruined the 3-Layer plan for 32-bit machines SOA had, by killing Genesis, 32X, Neptune, and forcing the early Saturn launch. All out of spite that SOA did what they couldn't, and brought Nintendo to its knees, and nearly ended them.
@@Jmeon4eva To be fair, the 32X was an absurd idea and it calls into question whether SoA’s version of events about potential Sony and SGI partnerships are accurate. A single 32-bit CD console was the right way to go but the die was cast when Sega went with an evolutionary rather than revolutionary system architecture.
@@trzy 32X was originally SOJ's idea though as an entirely new machine to compete with the freaking Atari Jaguar if you can believe it. It was SOA's idea to still release it as an add on though even knowing the Saturn was coming instead of killing it like NOA killed the 64DD * Because expensive add ons for consoles are stupid * so they still screwed up.
@@trzy it was soj idea to compete with the atari jaguar and 3do. soa just pushed this particular solution. soj should've used their heads and devoted all resources to the saturn at that point. Stoller should've increased the price but you cant fault SoA for trying to win back the west.
I got mine at launch, 9/9/99. Still have it. What a great system!
I'm amazed it still works. I've been through 5 at least and the 6th is failing (laser problems, controller port failing...).
@@simon41978 I haven't played it in years. I'm storing it safely.
Me too.
Me too, I bought it on launch date. then when they were Fire selling i bought a bunch of games. i'm about 12 games away from owning all the North America games, I also own Japanese games. as for the controller port i replaced the capacitors and added a battery mod.
@@simon41978 how much time would u say u get out of a dreamcast
I don't usually attach myself, emotionally to any gaming hardware, but man, the dreamcast was certainly something special, I remember being part of a web forum called Dreamcast Technical Pages and it was normally extremely well behaved and very tightly moderated. The day Sega announced it's exit from the hardware business that place exploded, it was something something behold.
That console helped me get through a time when I was battling severe depression, anxiety and drug addiction. I knew I could come home and simply escape what felt like an absolutely tortured existence and whenever I had the console on, I felt, for a time that life was worth living.
I don't suffer from any of these issues today,
It was a very sweet Dream
Well you should attach yourself to console hardware; not games!
I was on DCTP as well. Then moved on to Gamers Republic. Good times.
The chasm between SoJ and SoA never receded. Even in the GO Sega videos released some weeks ago, where Sega is celebrating its history, there is no mention to how well Genesis went overseas, not a word about Tom Kalinske. Even decades later.
And this is why Sega failed. SoJ and SoA rarely seemed like they were on the same page. It's why the Genesis did great in America but why everything after failed. It's almost like they were two separate companies competing against each other.
@@vdubrida70 They were at times openly antagonistic, particularly SoJ toward SoA.
I feel this is what's happening at Sony but it's The Western branch calling the shots.
Sega of Japan was against itself, let alone Sega of America.
@@FrederickGuese Yes, it does start to feel like Sony right now is doing a Reverse Sega on themselves in a couple ways.
The journey of the dreamcast is so fascinating. Still learning little details here and there every time it's been looked at
Dreamcast is a beloved system for me and will always have a place in my heart with the absolute joy it brought :-)
It still hurts that this happened to the Dreamcast. It could've been so much more even though it was still pretty good. I have so many great memories with the Dreamcast It was the first console I bought brand new with my own money I earned working.
We could of had the Dreamcast 4
Same here I bought it with my 1st full-time job and was living at my girlfriend's. This system was amazing it got me through that stage of life
@@miguelangelbazan8697 it blew me away more when I first saw that killer whale on sonic adventure more than any game up to that point lol
I had no idea just to what extent Sega owes Okawa-sama. That man is a saint! If he didn’t sacrifice all that, we’d probably have never seen anything Sega after the early 2000s. Wow. Sega should have renamed themselves Okawa after all that.
I just bought one this morning from my local game shop :)
how much?
@@alex.starostin 70
@Stop Banningme thats fine! its a memory with games i loved
@Stop Banningme wtf
Also reliance on straight arcade ports when gamer's taste were changing as we were entering the early sandbox era hurt them in my opinion. Great video man keep it up
Right on.
At the time, gamers wanted more than shallow arcade port. More games like shenmue and less virtual something would have done the trick. What killed dreamcast was poor exécutive décision...
@@monsieurdubitatif8567 Shenmue cost $70 Million USD at the time to develop (and they began working on it for the Saturn). As innovative and groundbreaking as it may have been, it cost Sega a lot of money.
Sega was on the path though, Blue Stinger had a larger scope than the arcade ports (it was a Resident Evil like game and US launch title), the game Headhunter also showed up, which had many of the gameplay elements of GTA3, which released around the same time on PS2 (GTA3 10/01, HH 11/01) which is admittedly late in the game .
Exactly I have a Dreamcast with loads of games. Still have them all but in reality many are 10 minute games then off. They have also aged very badly. Play Crazy Taxi then GTA 3 and you would think you have jumped a two generations. Not graphically but the immersion and gameplay. Gran Turismo also embarrassed Sega's racing games.
There were a lot of factor that killed the Dreamcast, is not as simple as "Sony had a better marketing campaign"
People still loved arcade style experiences, but you had to expand on the presentation considerably. The bare bones stuff didn’t fly anymore.
I wasn't a Sega fan growing up, but had friends that were. From what I remember of them talking about the DC, they wanted it/liked it, but were burned out on upgrading their systems so fast with the Sega CD/32X upgrades, then the Saturn, and then the DC in relatively quick succession
Add to this timeline that Sega's campaign of infantile negative advertising particularly toward Nintendo probably worked nearly as much against Sega as it did for it.
Still my favorite system to this day. Had great games. Even after I played most of the catalog, I used it as an emulation console through the early 2000s until I got a modded Xbox. Still bust it out more than any other old console I own, though the Saturn is quickly becoming a runner up since ODEs.
This channel continues to deliver quality. Excellent video
The candle that burns twice as bright, dies twice as fast... the dreamcast and sega as a console company is living proof of that statement
Sega peaked as a company with the Genesis only downhill from that.
@@eskanda3434 I played the game that caused all others to have the parental rating system added to them on the Sega CD Genesis: "Night Trap".
@@MikinessAnalog I thought it was Mortal Kombat?
@@truthteller5521 this was way earlier than Mortal Kombat.
The problem is, the Dreamcast never burned at all 😂
Great product, but at that point, nobody wanted it. Sega were completely uncool by then.
I remember going into a game shop with my brother back in winter 1999. They had a Dreamcast on show with powerstone as it was about to get released in Europe. We were absolutely blown away by the graphics and gameplay and were instantly sold on it...we'd never seen this quality anything so good before!
This ^
Bernie Stolar intentionally sabotaging the Saturn in the US market is one of the main things that ultimately sealed the Dreamcast's fate IMO. Along with selling the console below cost, which made them lose a ton of money.
Not only Bernie Stolar but Kalinske too with 32x.
SEGA of America killed SEGA... Sony and their lies did the rest.
Sorry my English is rusty.
@@tiagofernandes8389 SEGA of Japan made many mistakes too. They designed the Saturn- which was a mess. And ignored the IP games that succeeded in Genesis era (even Sonic). Hence the Saturn flopped- it was expensive, complicated, and had an worse library than Genesis. Furthermore the dreamcast launch in Japan was botched.
Stormspark: only 9 million ppl bought the console- if the orice wasn't lowered that number would be even lower...
@@vulcanraven9701 Yep for all of Stolar's mistakes with Saturn he's arguably the one reason DC had any success considering America was the sole region it didn't bomb at launch in.
So many great games in such a short lifespan.
90s Sega is a nutshell. Truer (sic) words have rarely been spoken.
Sega was a one hit wonder with home consoles. Only the Genesis/Mega Drive was properly successful. The rest were a mess. But I still love Sega.
God bless the Genesis greatest video game console ever.
Sega's success was always inconsistent. Genesis did well in America and some other place but not in Japan, Saturn did good in Japan but not in America, etc.
This may come as a surprise by the Saturn was a success, albeit only a small one. It wasn't until the Dreamcast that SEGA recorded losses.
Master System was big in Europe and Brazil
I remember Toy R Us had a demo loop of a Dreamcast playing Sonic Adventure. The picture was so clear and the graphics so crisp. I wanted that system and got one.
What a fantastic console, I remember I was at Electronics Boutique on 9/9/99 buying my Dreamcast on launch, spent the next week playing Sonic Adventure and House Of The Dead 2 for hours a day. When they pulled the plug and left the hardware business, I was saddened, I have been with them since the Genesis. I got an XBOX on launch and loved it, been with them ever since, but Sega will always be my favorite.
I was with one of my best friends waiting in line that night. (Midnight release.) It came with Soul Calibur and a demo disc that had Power Stone on it. It was a two hour drive. We got back just after two a.m. My boy went straight to bed; and I proceeded to play that damn thing until like 5 a.m. Good times. Don't even get me started on the Hydro Thunder port. Amazingly arcade perfect.
@@nickparsons337 absolutely, I picked up Soul Caliber afterwards and played that until I unlocked everything lol. Hydro Thunder is awesome as well, I still pop that one in from time to time. I always wish Sega would make a comeback in hardware one day, but I can understand from a business stand point it isn’t worth it.
10:41 brand new game in USA == 50 bucks
brand new game in Brazil== 300 bucks
guess which country they spend their time researching how to pirate games?
Nego acha q BR é mendigo toda vez q alguem fala daqui é só se humilhando
@@ultramarine40k65 😂😂😂😂
I just typed a comment about piracy doesn't kill a console, it helps it. the rest of the world is not like the united states or europe. in the ps1 and ps2 days those were huge successes because you could buy pirated games on the streets or every store. the console that has the cheap games you can get everywhere is the console that wins. I've talked about this on forums or facebook pages and sometimes people from the first world have a very hard time understanding it, they say "if you can't pay for it then don't get it".
that would mean no entertainment at all for the third wold, at least back then in the ps1 and ps2 eras. it was the golden age of movies on dvd and music on cd too, so most people got their movies, games and music buying pirated copies on the streets.
@@pelgervampireduck it kills because they don't make money on hardware but software. Also I comment on how even on the usa people would pirate games even if they were cheap on their country.
@@ChaotixBR without piracy the ps1 and ps2 wouldn't have sold millions of units in south america
This made me realize how lucky we are that we still have Sega at all.
But Sega sucks now. So if they would of died i would not miss them.
@@CubamusPrime I'll agree with you they suck now in comparison to say 1994ish era. They have come a long way since say 2006. They are a thriving business. Have a lot of good titles including the last couple Sonics. Also the Atlus acquisition was big one.
@@josephschwarten6468I actually live less than 20 mins away from their sega/atlus corporate office in Irvine, ca. It's a small office building compared to their 90s office space 😅
Concise and comprehensive. I love how you can deconstruct something so many others have talked about yet present unique angles others may have missed in their over-simplification. Very informative and enlightening. Great work as always.
Reason 9: Microsoft entering the market. Despite all the setbacks the Sega endured, they sold 10 million consoles in about 1.5-2 years worldwide . Microsoft went on to sell 25 million consoles in its ~7 year life span. Undoubtedly some of the 25 million sales would have been transferred to Sega and Nintendo had Microsoft not entered. Also, Microsoft had a strong focus on the online gaming. Sega was the only other console manufacturer at the time that took online gaming seriously. If Xbox had not launched, Sega would have continued focusing on SegaNet, making it the ONLY console for any serious online gaming for several years. Sega would have had all their sports games online at an early stage where as the same can not be said for the games on PS2 or GameCube. NFL2K1 shipped with online play September of 2000 . PS2 Madden didn't ship with online play till Aug 2003. That three year difference, in addition to many other what ifs if we were living in a different time line (Crazy Taxi Online, Halo DC, Shenmue online, JSR Online, etc) Sega could have sold many more Dreamcasts and been profitable.
I'm not saying the reasons are wrong in this video. They are all great but I can't help but feel that the gorilla in the room at the time was Microsoft. Everyone had a PS2, that's a given. Which means the rest of the market was to be fought out between whoever was left. You mentioned in the video that Japanese executives walked out of a meeting where the proposition was made to turn Sega into a Software only company. I believe that back in late 2000, early 2001 when that decision was made that changed the direction of the company, if Microsoft was not entering the market, I don't think Sega would have made the jump to software only. That means there would only be two console manufacturers when there's clearly room for three.
Sega knew the American behemoth was arriving and rather than fight a three front war it bowed out and let the more organized manufacturers with deeper pockets duke it out, which was the right move. That's the way I see it.
Really good point about M$ entering the console business with their virtually unlimited money bank, definitely sealed the Sega decision to abandon Dreamcast and all its console business
Ironically, Microsoft had already entered the console market. Well, sort of, Dreamcast OS runs over Windows CE, like it says on the front*. I believe the Dreamcast booted to pretty much vanilla CE. If I recall correctly, the Dreamcast was "easy to program for..." because of this. Did someone already mention it? I want one.
edit: vanilla ME to vanilla CE, clarity, *i was not entirely correct (thx Charlie) only some development kits ran CE. My understanding is the dreamcast could run CE, albeit an optimized version. It did help make development of SOME games easier, so there's that.
@@PhilMcGuntup Dreamcast was "easy" to program for because the architecture was simpler from the Saturn and the Genesis/32X/CD monstrosity. The development tools were also becoming easier to use and much more advanced for 3D.
As for Windows CE, if the game was developed for it, it would boot the Windoes OS from the disk the game came on rather than the console.
Good insight my friend . I seriously feel like sega ( genesis and Dreamcast) consoles are my most nostalgic consoles . The consoles I had the most fun on , probably like all of us here on this thread . I got the sports Dreamcast in fall of 2000 the next spring they discontinued Dreamcast and in 2001 was gifted a PS2 but man that year or so on the Dreamcast I had so much fun with soul calibur , unreal tournament, RE code veronica , rainbow ….damn I miss it …
That makes alot of sense. I whole heartedly agree. But I still miss the glory days of SEGA.
dreamcast is a great example of being an early adopter of ideas isnt always the best thing
Back in 2000 my friend kept trying to talk me into buying a Dreamcast. He even lent me his console for a bit and I played through RE: Code Veronica and loved it. However the sad reality was that I was part of the statistic that was holding out for the next Playstation. Sorry Sega Lord...
You did the right thing, Sega was already on their way out when the dreamcast launched.
It's ok, we're all gamers, no one is blaming you.
No Virtua Fighter, no Golden Axe, no Shinobi, no Street of Rage and no shining force. All the money went to Shenmue!
Yes! I was hoping for GA, Shinobi, and SoR sequels on DC. Sadly, those games never happened on DC.
The Dreamcast had Virtua Fighter 3tb, though.
Hey shenmue was worth it though
a "dream cast" is the thing that a doctor puts around your dreams after they get broken.
why did dreamcast have to leave us so young....
That 'open world' Sonic game, man that was awesome for its time.
This video should be called "The Explicable Death of the Sega Dreamcast". You did a good job!
I've been playing a lot of Dreamcast lately. What a great library in such a short time. If SEGA ever came out with another console, I would be the first to pre-order.
Nah if they do it'll be no real sega anyway
Very interesting video!
Dreamcast will always be underrated. Been my go-to console recently and I also discovered some great DC games on your channel!
@ammonitida strong SoyBot vibes here
Try Record of Lodoss War :)
@ammonitida Those types of games take time to make and tend to come out later in the console's life. Still, the DC got games like Shenmue, Grandia 2 and Skies of Arcadia in its short life. By the way, the simple thrills and accessibility of arcade games is what a lot of us crave and appreciate, and why DC's library is still so appealing to us. I'm sick of "interactive movie" and mundanity sim type of games that Sony specializes in.
@@Prizrak-hv6qk
I was hugely addicted to PSO back in the day.
@ammonitida DC had the best gaming library for the 3 years it existed.
Back on 1998 pcs were still jealous on consoles and arcades,after the 2000s they started to deliver.
Great video and commentary. Your conclusion about the intangibles killing Dreamcast is spot on.
Was truly hoping that when Sega went 3rd party they would have become one of the premiere 3rd party developers. Sadly that didn’t happen either.
Would like to see you do a video on the steady decline of the Sega Brand from 2001 to today.
Still my favorite console of all time. Every game simply had a feel that other games at the time didn't have, and still don't have, there was just something about the way they felt.
Skies Of Arcadia Forever! ❤️
Hey man at least you can say that old Sega went out with a bang, the Dreamcast even to this day still looks and plays like a great console
This is the video I have been waiting for GREAT JOB on the awesome content
I've always seen the Dreamcast's failure as inevitable. Even back in the day, while I didn't think they'd just quit, I knew that the PS2 was gonna dominate it, so I hadn't put a lot of thought into this topic before, but as you highlight, there's a ton of reasons why the table was set the way it was that really put the Dreamcast in such a terrible position to begin with. I also hadn't realize how badly Bernie Stolar had messed up the situation.
Part of me wonders if adding DVD would have been enough for Sega to survive. Hype for the PS2 was massive, and there's still a power issue to deal with, but if Sega had launched a year earlier with a $300 DVD player it would have still been a huge deal on the consumer market where DVD players (stand alone) were twice that price. Perhaps with that added edge (and the higher price point meaning they wouldn't have lost cash on every unit) they could have weathered out another generation as a secondary console like Microsoft and Nintendo did. After all, while we nerds obsess over who won, the reality is that as long as you're consistently making money, it doesn't really matter if you're in 2nd, 3rd, or 4th place.
Yes, Stolar really screwed the pooch on that one. But the fall of SEGA and the dreamcast was inevitable. The PS1 sold 100 million consoles- the PS2 selling 150 was not an accident. By the time dreamcast launched, most people overwhelmingly believed that Sony had superior consoles and games. The Saturn had a disappointing library that relied on arcade ports while abandoning the many IP titles from the Genesis era. The Dreancast coming out so early made everything worse for SEGA
@@vulcanraven9701 Yup Sega failed because it had been bleeding out internally since the Saturn's failure. Both the N64 and Gamecube failed to touch the Playstation yet Nintendo survived and managed a hit with Wii.
@@AxeCrazyAutobot this. Nintendo had many years of making high selling consoles and it had a consistent fan base. plus their gameboy always sold well regardless how their consoles did. Sega didn't have those things and then mishandled the Saturn. And couldn't recover from it.
The Dreamcast was a underrated system for its time.
Very true! I wish Sega had created a more sustainable business model though... not built on wishful thinking.
@@KrimsonKracker Nintendo GameCube was also underrated
I believe it was to ahead of its time
@@samuraibeastwarrior2886 Dreamcast lite years better than cube
@@Lyricaldeamin OK
I got a Dreamcast in October 1999. It blew us all away. First system with graphics that looked lifelike. Sega was always ahead of its time with its consoles.
It was heartbreaking to see sega leave the game industry, it was a ground breaking, and ahead of its time console. It never got its chance to shine, but even 20 yrs later, its become a much revered, and loved collectors item. They may have made mistakes, but many times it proved its superiority, with games like power stone, and my personal favorite phantasy star online. At least recently sega has made a comeback of sorts with the genesis mini, and the astro mini as well. Its a shame how they lost to sony, but I never stopped loving sega. Btw x, i just bought a modified sega dreamcast from a seller on e bay, retrodigitalstore. It has a gdemu drive, fully loaded with the entire north american library. A battery fuse mod, controller port mod, noctua fan, and an awsome hdmi modification. I was even able to select a drive color, a power led light color, and a resident evil menu theme for launching the games. So i am once again a dreamcast owner, and i will cherish this system the rest of my days. Long live sega!
You hit the nail on the coffin with how not to run a company since '94 and beyond. I was a kid during the 16 bit Genesis days and it was the cool system to have. As it went along however, it seemed like you had to keep buying some new piece of accessory to keep up with gaming on it. 6-buttom controller to truly enjoy Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat games, the 32X, and CD. And just as quickly as those were introduced to market, they were quickly abandoned/not supported much in favor of something else. As a kid, it was already difficult to ask my parents to buy a videogame much less a new accessory for the system. By the time the Saturn came along, I was already leery of Sega's commitment to supporting their hardware/accessories. Kinda like Google with their services except they have TONS of money vs Sega.
Great vid! Learned alot really dig how you laid it all out in sections
Always love these historic retrospectives that you put together
I watched this video about 4 hours after I ordered a Dreamcast
The Dreamcast was such an amazing system. I had so many fun and entertaining days and night with it. The system will always be something special for me.
That Grandia II fight theme as the bgm got me goosebumps again. Good on you for using Skies of Arcadia as well.
Another banger video! Love this, and keep up the great work! :D
I didn’t realize how charitable sega was at the time !! I bought the dream cast and every game that Kmart had plus extra controllers the day of its release of my senior year in hs. Me and my friends were glued to this console for a year straight .
Given the harm SEGA had done to its brand with the 32X, SegaCD and Saturn, it's actually more Inexplicable that SEGA even got another chance. With the hype around Sony and Nintendo still being strong at the time, the Dreamcast was likely doomed from the start.
Saturn was doomed due to the sega cd and 32x flops, infighting and messy prepping and suprise launch.
@@maroon9273 Also because the Saturn's game library was a total downgrade from the Genesis. It lacked major Sonic games plus the other first party titles that its predecessor had. Worse sports games. Oh and Virtua Fighter doesn't hokd a candle to Mortal Kombat so i dont understand why the F$@# they put Virtua Fighter as a launch title to a console that was supposed to be better than the Genesis.
@@vulcanraven9701 Because VF and the Arcade scene was huge...in Japan which was Sega's only priority with Saturn.
@@AxeCrazyAutobot you're right. i think Sega tried too hard making the saturn work in Japan and it struggled in USA and EU because of that.
@@vulcanraven9701 Basically SOJ was too prideful to just let Nintendo have the Japanese market so it sacrificed the Western market it had been successful in for an ultimately pyrrhic victory with the Saturn.
A fantastic retrospective, but I would have loved to see a longer video. Keep up the awesome work.
just saw an interview with you in retro gamer magazine, that must have been cool for them to ask. nice video as always, greetings from germany :-)
Dreamcast should have been launch firstly in Europe and USA in 1998 (where Saturn was clearly dead), leaving the japanese market the last region to see the new console release. Saturn had a solid user base there and it could have lasted until late 1999 with no internal competition.
Sega should had fight to get FFVII to be developed for Saturn (if not exclusively at least multiplatform title) after Square decided not to work for N64 due to cartridge limitation. They were doing well in Japan until late 1997. Having this game and a proper 3D Sonic in its library, Saturn could have ruled the Japanese market easily and definitely, boost its sales in western countries.
Sony had deeper pockets to bribe 3rd parties away from other consoles. So getting FF7(along with others) on Saturn would've been an impossible task for Sega at that time. Not to mention their arcade ventures in the west were dying and weren't giving Sega any revenue back to help them recuperate financial losses they were going through at that time.
I think selling over a million of anything isn't a failure, but when it comes to mass marketing, research and development and manufacturing, I suppose that's not enough. Alas, poor Dreamcast. We hardly knew ye.
The problem for SEGA was that they were dishing out a lot of money to make each dreamcast console while also not getting enough buyers. They put a lower price the price for the console in the USA but that led to them selling loss. If they didn't do that, they woulda sold less dreamcast and they would have wasted money on consoles that no one is buying
@@vulcanraven9701 Pretty much, as much shit as SLX gives Stolar for selling DC at a loss it was either that or not sell any DC.
A higher priced DC would have just made it look even more like a joke next to the coming PS2.
I think this is my favorite video that you made. I knew some of the main points you had, but you articulated them very well and even brought a couple of tidbits I wasn't aware of. Also I liked the way you presented the points.
As a consumer back then, it came down to three main reasons for me:
1) Something you didn't mention: No backwards compatibility, unlike the PS2. Everyone I knew traded in their PS1, used the money to help buy a PS2, and got to enjoy both game libraries still.
2) DVD: after all, that was how a lot of people talked their parents into buying it ("We can also watch movies on it!")
3: Broken trust: mismanagement and/or abandonment of the Sega CD, 32X, Saturn = three strikes and you're out. I had no reason to trust Sega at this point. The low initial price point even hurt--it suggested this was a cheap, cash-in console like the 32X.
If the Saturn had been allowed to hit its peak (i.e. more games like Streets Fighter Alpha 3), and they had waited to include DVD, perhaps the story would have been different.
I won a DVD player from crutchfeild in 2000 at a hollymead school raffle and I knew right away sega blew it by not including DVD support
DVD was absolutely the future
Skies music always hits my nostalgia button.
Sega and the Dreamcast will always be my fav developer and console. I can't give you just one reason why I've stuck by Sega all these years since the Master System came out, but it's just something about their games and hardware that stuck with me. Even when TG16 had a CD first with better games, I flocked to the Sega CD. Sega has always had my loyalty. Great video on this and I learned a couple things I never heard before on the demise of the Dreamcast.
Fantastic breakdown. Even having lived through all of that, there were a lot of details I wasn't familiar with in there. This is why I contribute to your Patreon.
I put the Dreamcast in the same category as the Wii U. Great consoles that had a small but strong library of games, but were poorly underutilized and tanked in sales because of bad management.
They just never recovered from the 32X, SCD, and Saturn.
Crazy considering they had it in the bag with Genesis. Can't imagine how frustrated SOA must have felt Christmas 95' being 700,000 Genesis units short of demand. This is after the Sega CD, 32x and Saturn launches. Still couldn't kill the Genesis.
Saturn failing due to distraction of the 32x, suprise launch and the infighting with SOJ and SOA.
Fantastic video man, great script and great in-depth information. One of your best videos dare I say! Love the content man and always make sure to watch all of it 🤘🏻
As a kid I was sold a broken Dreamcast that had no sound, shortly thereafter I got a PS2 and I still played my broken Dreamcast as much as my PS2.
It’s so sad how SEGA’s hardware business died 😰 nobody I know who had one had a bad word to say about it... they just thought it was a bad investment and that the PS2 had a DVD player.
I've had a dreamcast nearly my whole life.
Now I have two, a second sega sports one with a GDEMU so I can Keep Dreaming!
The Dreamcast was young hackers dream : we could burn 70$ games on 50ct discs found on the internet !
What does any of this have to do with hacking, other than the fact that hackers are the ones who enabled it in the first place? Being a consumer of pirated games doesn't make you a hacker. :) I don't recall any DC games costing $70, BTW.
@@Prizrak-hv6qk in Switzerland and France games costed 70$/chf at least and Japanese DC GAMES costed often even more. Games were super expensive in Europe (I used to sell them) especially import games, and back in the genesis / snes era game prices could go up to 140 chf/$ depending on the chip, size (FX, 32mb games) and rarity (import)
I don’t understand your issue with the word “hacking” : maybe pirates 🏴☠️ would be more appropriate but whatever, enjoy your day ;)
That's not hacking. The Dreamcast had a poor circumvention for piracy. All you needed was a Bootloader disc, and once you booted that it prompted to load your pirated CD (which you could burn yourself via CD Writer from a PC) into the unit and it would boot. Sega was selling the Dreamcast at a loss, and the games were supposed to be the profit to balance that out. With the bootloader that every Dreamcast owner eventually found out, Dreamcast owners no longer bought any games.
I love these videos. Such a walk down memory lane. The Dreamcast will always be my favorite console just because of that time in my life. Great video SLX, thank you.
Wow, I was unaware of all this stuff. Great info here in this vid!
Also, I think a lot of gamers had switched over from consoles to PC by the late 90s. I was a big Sega fan in the early/mid 90s and I loved my Megadrive, but in 1999 my interest had shifted to the PC. I was playing Quake 3, Unreal Tournament, StarCraft, etc. So I don't think I even noticed that Sega was releasing a new console at the time.
Funny thing is Quake 3 Arena and Unreal Tournament were also released for the DC, they were compatible with the keyboard and mouse peripherals. Quake 3 could also play with/against PC players online.
@@lazarushernandez5827 Wow that's really cool! I never knew that. Did you play those games on the DC back then?
@@bleepintunes yep, wasn't that good at them though. Played a 3 player split screen with some friends, one on kb/m, the other and me on controller, keyboard and mouse slaughtered us on controller.
@@lazarushernandez5827 Cool! Yeah I can't even imagine playing quake 3 with a controller, that must have been a huge handicap for such a fast game? But maybe it could have been a nice feature if you're playing against someone that's much better? to give that person the controller and even out the odds :)
I wasn't that good either but it was still a lot of fun. I remember playing Q3DM17 "the longest yard" a lot, that level was my favourite.
Sega should have stuck with the Saturn until a real cost effective competitor to the PS2 could be developed.
No... they couldn't. They HAD to be early. Not one year early, but 6 to 9 months before PS2 launched. The strategy worked for Genesis because competition was focused on one console. Nintendo was focused on NES for too long, so SEGA saw opportunity. It is RARE to be in that Genesis spot. Very. VERY. RARE. SEGA had 2 years head start.
Saturn was rushed to market too soon. Like, the same day E3 1995 was ongoing. Sony had a 'mic drop' moment, just simply saying "$299" and... walked off. God lord.
Retailers were PISSED at SEGA. FURIOUS. ANGRY. They booted Saturn off retail shelves. It was stupid.
Developers were also working overtime, rushing games out for a hard-to-develop console. Obviously they were angry at SEGA.
Dear lord no! The Saturn was a corpse left in the sun here in the USA. They needed another start.
@Orzuum Actually, they knew of Sony. Not just because of the nasty divorce between Nintendo and Sony. Sony approached SEGA as a potential partner during the Nintendo PlayStation development. Y'know, shopping around. But SEGA in their naivete, rejected Sony. They're the guys who do sound chips for game companies. 🙄 (Oh, SEGA, how stupid.) Not only that, they've actually made games for Genesis.
@Orzuum
Could you explain that line of thought further?
I disagree, but I am intrigued by theorizing that Sega should/could have let Sony be alone in the market since Nintendo had no entry into 32 that was viable and the other CD systems were eating each other
@Orzuum Yes, they did make or publish some Genesis games. Look it up.
I still love the Dreamcast. I still played it exclusively for a couple more years. Games were heavily discounted. I did get a PS2 later on. Because od EA titles mostly. The PS2 was a good machine, but had no personality. IMO that is. It was just a console. It played games really well. I must have had a grudge.
I still have a Dreamcast. Of my 30 consoles, it has a front spot, right under my TV. The PS2 is a prop for my ColecoVision. With the CV higher, I can sneak my Intellivision under it on the same shelf. I still use the PS2 when I'm in need of a classic NFS game.
SEGA could only survive so much. The later 90s saw some poor decisions. I'm happy they still exist in software. People still hunger for a DC2. I say that the Xbox line is as close as we'll get.
Great video as always.
My local video game,Beeper and early cell phone repair shop...in Riverside California....
Was a dreamcast bootleg haven....also..
I had every game on DC ....$5-$20 a game!plus buddy who owned the shop gave me a deal that every costumer id bring to the store and would buy something he would give me a free game of my choosing...
I brought so many friends and family to the store.... He was overwhelmed with business from me... I was the fuckin' man then...i would copy(burn)alot of the games of his and sell them to people at school for $25-$50 a game or package deals 7 games for $100... Cha-Chng
Remember the Reindeer boot disc? I miss Sega Dreamcast and the late 90's early 2000's... What a fun moment in time...
I would've loved the dreamcast to have lasted long enough to at least get ports of HOTD3 and Outrun 2. I dunno how they would've done it, but it would've been interesting to say the least!
It could be possible,psp and ps2 had outrun2 ports,so why not dc
@@vasileios6301 that's true. I do forget sometimes that outrun 2 came to the psp!
It lasted too little. I remember trying it at the mall and thinking about buying it and then... boom... it was gone
I just found this channel, and really enjoyed this video. I'm definitely gonna do some binge watching when I have the time. As a huge retro Sega fan who still owns all of their consoles, I appreciate this.
Great video and well put together
Sony had Squaresoft support, at jrpgs peak. That was reason enough to some people dont even think about the Dreamcast.
Yes, even original Xbox and Gamecube can't beat PS2 because that reason imo.
Sega did it to themselves with their god awful management. Still, there's been a void in the industry ever since Sega stepped out of the console front, and it hasn't felt the same since.
SEGA relied too much on arcade games and sonic. When both of thoae lost influence Sega went out
Thanks again for the quality content and excellent presentation!
Great review as always. So much: What If... Scenarios.
I can only speak for me and my gamer friends at the time, but for us, it was a "boy who cried wolf" scenario. No way these guys had any credibility left after Sega CD, 32X , and the American Saturn launch had disappointed us all so bad. Plus, Sony had hit a home run in '95 right as Sega was racking up its third strike. We had to go PS2.
The reason Dreamcast didn't have EA games was SEGA just bought a sport games dev studio, but EA demanded theirs to be the only sport games on the platform. SEGA declined.
From an European market standpoint, the Dreamcast lacked a strong soccer game and a racing game competing with Gran Turismo (Sega GT didn't do it for the masses).
The piracy stuff is overplayed. PS1 and 2 were pirated to death too, but they did wonderfuly.
Another thing maybe lacking in the video is the loss of confidence in the brand. SEGA just had 3 fails (MegaCD, 32X and Saturn) before launching the Dreamcast. That together with the PS2 hype (PS1 was huge) killed many sales.
Ultimately, the Dreamcast had great games, but couldn't offer the "full experience" the PS2 did. I had both.
The last segment is literally about the loss of consumer confidence in the brand...
If DC had also dvd,then it had nothing to fear from the PS2. EA was bribed from Sony anyway, it was well known back then.
And dvd was needed not because of the stupid excuse for watching movies (you dont buy a console to watch movies or listen to audio cds) ,but for more data storage needed to make bigger games.
Sorry mate, I didn't catch that. I started writing my comment when the "final thoughts" segment started. I didn't expect you introducing a new subject in the wrap up.
@@vasileios6301 you're kidding, right? Everyone I knew had a PS2 used it to watch movies. That was an ENORMOUS selling point. I have zero clue where you're getting your information from.
It could have done better with DVD, but there was a lot more going on, like a lack of support from many companies as stated in the video (Konami, Square, Namco, EA...) When you put it all together, I don't think the Dreamcast could have won. But eh, we will never know.
Brother you have an amazing channel… Wish I could figure out how to edit soo professionally
The best times of my gaming life were with the PS1 and the Dreamcast, RIP
Sega had definitely burned most their good standing with customers with failed peripherals to the Genesis, and later the premature death of the Saturn, certainly with me; couple that with the company's financial problems and it's no wonder it failed.
only if dreamcast head launched worldwide for sega before japan i think dreamcast would had sold more then what they could sell it for and should had delayed the japanese launch because saturn was doing well in japan
SOJ was bizarre. They tried killing the Genesis early in the West. Then then they kill the Saturn early in their own backdoor.
@@supersexysega The first part is true.
The 2nd part is also true, but not quite the same SoJ: by that point new leadership was in place, along with Stolar in SoA, Shoichiro Irimajiri headed up SoJ, they were all for pushing the DC.
DVD wasn't an option when Sega make the Dreamcast. Piracy wasn't really an issue until later, but it didn't help. The real problem seems to be that Sega was subsidizing the Dreamcast with profits from the arcade division and the bottom fell out
When I was stationed in South Korea over 20 years ago there were shops outside of base where you could buy boot discs (i KID YOU NOT) not just for bootleg games for the Dreamcast, but also so you could play VCD's (Remember those?); VCD's were movies that were on two discs, and the video quality was less than ideal along with the sound quality, but they were cheap compared to DVD's back then. What's interesting is that in order to play the VCD's on The Sega Dreamcast you had to buy a "boot" disc that was obviously like an action replay disc that could recode to do things the systems weren't really meant to do. The Boot Discs were fairly cheap, and you'd go through the motions on the main menu then pull the boot disc out then slap you VCD in and presto.... you could watch movies on your Sega Dreamcast. This was during the days of analogue/CRT Tube tvs and even VHS was still around. I can remember walking into a tv store in the year 2001 and flat screen 720p tv's cost anywhere from $10,000.00 for a 20 inch to $50,000 for a 42 inch... we're not talking the flat screen tube tv's, but the actual flat tv's like we see today, but that was in Seattle before the Democrats destroyed it like they did Detroit years ago. New tech ain't worth the price tag, even if you have the money for it. It's just retarded. Man.... I'm gettin' old.
I don't know how it is out there now, but.... the black market for ANYTHING... like knock off designer clothes, watches, I MEAN ANYTHING you could think of was pretty rampant out there. Like it or hate it soldiers didn't make a lot of money (they never have), and those knock off stores were littered with soldiers, but not so much Koreans. Interesting....