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The world is a business now - everything is a business venture - and the business world is a savage industry. Television shows, despite how good they critically may be or how popular the actors in them are, can be cancelled in a heartbeat if nobody is watching. The same happens with our games magazines, remember the Video Gamer mag for a pound? Remember how great it was? Only to be cancelled. The entertainment industry can be very unforgiving, and sometimes the only guarantee for success is a good first-impression.
Much like the sports, television, and the film industry, the video game industry has been growing bigger by the year, and is quite a big money maker. Nintendo and Sony have been experiencing a lot of success with their video consoles throughout the 90s and are still going strong today.
However, for a struggling company like Sega, even its great games for their Dreamcast console, were not enough to save the wonder machine.
What went wrong to cause Sega's Dreamcast to fail as a video game console? despite all of the engineered improvements that Sega did to make it more appealing to the mainstream gamer and user-friendlier for software developers?
Believe it or not, the Sega Dreamcast was in trouble from the beginning. Despite It being a well put together kit.
Before the Dreamcast's European launch, Sega's credibility with the mainstream industry was tarnished because of the disappointments of their previous systems, the Sega Saturn and Sega CD.
There was a general sense of mistrust from the mainstream gaming community towards Sega because of this, and with the reigning success of the PlayStation and Nintendo 64, many gamers continued to support those systems. The only people who really supported the Dreamcast were the largely gamers who enjoyed Sega's other systems, and unfortunately, that is a very small minority in the gaming industry.
Think of the Sega as a popular Hollywood actor, like Kevin Costner. Some of you may be rolling your eyes at me choosing Kevin Costner as a "popular actor", which is exactly my point. Before Kevin Costner directed and starred in the over-budgeted Hollywood "bomb" Waterworld, he was a fairly popular actor. After the film was released, his credibility as an actor and director was stained. When he released his other big-budget post-apocalyptic film The Postman, many people didn't go to see it, because they felt that it was going to be another overly ambitious Hollywood silly American venture on Costner's behalf.
Today, even though Costner may star in some good film's, he's not the big name in Hollywood that he used to be.
This is the same with Sega. After years of being the underdog in the gaming industry, and after tons of bad press, especially surrounding the Sega Saturn, Sega became a company that many people scoffed at and showed little respect for. Even though the Dreamcast promised better graphics and a faster processor, many gamers rolled their eyes and returned to playing their Nintendo 64s and PlayStations. I've witnessed the rolling of eyes from friends of mine when they see that I have a Dreamcast among my healthy console line-up. "Oh, you have the Dreamcast?" they say condescendingly. They just don't understand.
But it wasn't only the gaming audience who didn't support the Dreamcast. Several powerful third-party developers like Squaresoft and Konami, chose not to support the console. As a matter of fact, Konami was supposed to release Castlevania: Resurrection, but for technical reasons the game was cancelled. However, in retrospect, Konami may have been the first developer to see that the Dreamcast was not going to be a big moneymaker, and bailed out. Some developers chose to take a "wait and see" approach, to see how well the system did before they would show support for it or were unenthusiastic about supporting the Dreamcast after the notoriety of the difficult-to-program-for Sega Saturn.
One thing that gamers today may have begun to notice with the release of next-generation consoles by Microsoft and Nintendo is that the marketing and advertising for both systems where well and truly successful, even Nintendo raving that the Gamecube is more popular than Harry Potter Is testament to that. Sega did a poor job promoting their products in the media outside of magazines compared to Nintendo.
Sega has been a struggling company for many years, and had been continually reporting losses every year that I can think of during the Dreamcast's run, and their stock was not too impressive.
I respect Sega for having the courage to go out on a limb with new and innovative titles, Samba Di Amigo for one. But I think there were too many experimental titles and not enough recognizable franchises to appeal to the mainstream audience. The Dreamcast also 'didn't' have enough sequels to popular franchises. Besides Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2, Phantasy Star Online (which wasn't really a true sequel to the RPG series), and the Dreamcast's version of Ecco the Dolphin, there weren't a lot of popular Sega titles that could catch the attention of the mainstream audience.
Why didn't Sega release an official Phantasy Star RPG sequel, or sequels to popular Sega franchises like Space Harrier, Shinobi, Hang-On, Afterburner or NiGHTS? Nintendo has a lot of success with their systems because they release a lot of franchise games that feature their most popular characters.
Sega also had too many ambitious add-on Ideas for the Dreamcast that never saw the light of day. Remember the zip drive, which would plug into the serial port of the Dreamcast, and supposedly would allow you to save information onto the zip disks instead of the VMUs? Never happened!. How about the DVD add-on that Sega announced they'd have after Sony announced that their PlayStation 2 could play DVD movie discs? Never saw the light of day!.
Sega had been criticized in the past for having too many add-ons with the Sega 32X and the Sega CD, and they repeated the same mistake with the Dreamcast with these ambitious products that never made it to store shelves. Sega made too many promises of great and innovative accessories, and delivered on nothing.
Who can forget the Dreamcast chip that was supposed to bring the ability to play Dreamcast games on Pace "set-top boxes," DVD players, and PCs? Even if that idea was still in the works, would people be able to get a hold of old Dreamcast games in 6 months to a year, without digging through bargain bins or searching online auctions? More importantly, would people care?
Ask any Sega fan what they felt earlier this year when Sega announced that they would be a platform-agnostic third-party developer and would no longer support their own Dreamcast hardware by 2002. I know from this very forum and the press, that a huge percentage were angered, confused and felt betrayed.
Because of Sega's Dreamcast departure announcement, many third-party developers cancelled their games altogether, or stopped their development for the Dreamcast and switched focus to other systems like the PlayStation 2, with games like Half-Life and Black and White.
If Sega wasn't even going to support their own system, why should developers trust the system as a viable financial option?
Sega also promised that there would be as many as 100 more games released for the system before the Dreamcast was dead. However, after the third-party developers started jump overboard, that number steeply dropped.
And for the poor Americans the ultimate blow to the Dreamcast came last month, when Sega America announced that the U.S. version of Shenmue II was being cancelled. Instead of being released on the Dreamcast by year's end, it will now be developed on the Microsoft Xbox and released in late 2002 for the American fans.
Shenmue II was supposed to be the last great game for the Dreamcast in the U.S. market. Sega apologized, and said that its cancellation was in the best interest of the company for financial reasons. Sega US said supposedly Shenmue II would also get a wider and more proper exposure on the in the US via Microsoft Xbox. Although these are good points, and is understandable from a financial business perspective, it was still a bad move on Sega's behalf. Who would have imagined that Sega would have cancelled one of their high-anticipated games in a country that would usually get every main release first? Thankgod we in Europe weren't treated in such a way, seeing Shenmue II being released this Friday.
Sega has turned its back on many of its biggest fans with the discontinuation of the Dreamcast console, but will their fans turn their backs on Sega? No. I honestly believe that Sega fans were one of the most loyal video game fans, and albeit they may be disappointed with Sega, they are also forgiving. Unfortunately and fortunately for some, what was once contained in one box, will be split up between three consoles and one handheld.
Sega fans, unless they're wealthy enough, will have to choose the best console that suits their Sega satisfaction, as each console seem to have their own exclusive Sega games.
In the end the games are what have made Sega a great company, not its hardware. With its new third-party console-agnostic plan, Sega can leave the hardware development to someone else and focus on the games. Sega will also get better exposure on these systems, as mainstream gamers will be more likely to try a Sega game on a GameCube, PlayStation 2, or Xbox.
I have high hopes that Sega's new plan will prove to be successful, and if they can't dominate in the console market, maybe they can be the dominant force in third-party software support.
It will probably regain a lot of credibility too that was lost with the company and from that, maybe, just maybe, a Sega console in the future.
Much like the sports, television, and the film industry, the video game industry has been growing bigger by the year, and is quite a big money maker. Nintendo and Sony have been experiencing a lot of success with their video consoles throughout the 90s and are still going strong today.
However, for a struggling company like Sega, even its great games for their Dreamcast console, were not enough to save the wonder machine.
What went wrong to cause Sega's Dreamcast to fail as a video game console? despite all of the engineered improvements that Sega did to make it more appealing to the mainstream gamer and user-friendlier for software developers?
Believe it or not, the Sega Dreamcast was in trouble from the beginning. Despite It being a well put together kit.
Before the Dreamcast's European launch, Sega's credibility with the mainstream industry was tarnished because of the disappointments of their previous systems, the Sega Saturn and Sega CD.
There was a general sense of mistrust from the mainstream gaming community towards Sega because of this, and with the reigning success of the PlayStation and Nintendo 64, many gamers continued to support those systems. The only people who really supported the Dreamcast were the largely gamers who enjoyed Sega's other systems, and unfortunately, that is a very small minority in the gaming industry.
Think of the Sega as a popular Hollywood actor, like Kevin Costner. Some of you may be rolling your eyes at me choosing Kevin Costner as a "popular actor", which is exactly my point. Before Kevin Costner directed and starred in the over-budgeted Hollywood "bomb" Waterworld, he was a fairly popular actor. After the film was released, his credibility as an actor and director was stained. When he released his other big-budget post-apocalyptic film The Postman, many people didn't go to see it, because they felt that it was going to be another overly ambitious Hollywood silly American venture on Costner's behalf.
Today, even though Costner may star in some good film's, he's not the big name in Hollywood that he used to be.
This is the same with Sega. After years of being the underdog in the gaming industry, and after tons of bad press, especially surrounding the Sega Saturn, Sega became a company that many people scoffed at and showed little respect for. Even though the Dreamcast promised better graphics and a faster processor, many gamers rolled their eyes and returned to playing their Nintendo 64s and PlayStations. I've witnessed the rolling of eyes from friends of mine when they see that I have a Dreamcast among my healthy console line-up. "Oh, you have the Dreamcast?" they say condescendingly. They just don't understand.
But it wasn't only the gaming audience who didn't support the Dreamcast. Several powerful third-party developers like Squaresoft and Konami, chose not to support the console. As a matter of fact, Konami was supposed to release Castlevania: Resurrection, but for technical reasons the game was cancelled. However, in retrospect, Konami may have been the first developer to see that the Dreamcast was not going to be a big moneymaker, and bailed out. Some developers chose to take a "wait and see" approach, to see how well the system did before they would show support for it or were unenthusiastic about supporting the Dreamcast after the notoriety of the difficult-to-program-for Sega Saturn.
One thing that gamers today may have begun to notice with the release of next-generation consoles by Microsoft and Nintendo is that the marketing and advertising for both systems where well and truly successful, even Nintendo raving that the Gamecube is more popular than Harry Potter Is testament to that. Sega did a poor job promoting their products in the media outside of magazines compared to Nintendo.
Sega has been a struggling company for many years, and had been continually reporting losses every year that I can think of during the Dreamcast's run, and their stock was not too impressive.
I respect Sega for having the courage to go out on a limb with new and innovative titles, Samba Di Amigo for one. But I think there were too many experimental titles and not enough recognizable franchises to appeal to the mainstream audience. The Dreamcast also 'didn't' have enough sequels to popular franchises. Besides Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2, Phantasy Star Online (which wasn't really a true sequel to the RPG series), and the Dreamcast's version of Ecco the Dolphin, there weren't a lot of popular Sega titles that could catch the attention of the mainstream audience.
Why didn't Sega release an official Phantasy Star RPG sequel, or sequels to popular Sega franchises like Space Harrier, Shinobi, Hang-On, Afterburner or NiGHTS? Nintendo has a lot of success with their systems because they release a lot of franchise games that feature their most popular characters.
Sega also had too many ambitious add-on Ideas for the Dreamcast that never saw the light of day. Remember the zip drive, which would plug into the serial port of the Dreamcast, and supposedly would allow you to save information onto the zip disks instead of the VMUs? Never happened!. How about the DVD add-on that Sega announced they'd have after Sony announced that their PlayStation 2 could play DVD movie discs? Never saw the light of day!.
Sega had been criticized in the past for having too many add-ons with the Sega 32X and the Sega CD, and they repeated the same mistake with the Dreamcast with these ambitious products that never made it to store shelves. Sega made too many promises of great and innovative accessories, and delivered on nothing.
Who can forget the Dreamcast chip that was supposed to bring the ability to play Dreamcast games on Pace "set-top boxes," DVD players, and PCs? Even if that idea was still in the works, would people be able to get a hold of old Dreamcast games in 6 months to a year, without digging through bargain bins or searching online auctions? More importantly, would people care?
Ask any Sega fan what they felt earlier this year when Sega announced that they would be a platform-agnostic third-party developer and would no longer support their own Dreamcast hardware by 2002. I know from this very forum and the press, that a huge percentage were angered, confused and felt betrayed.
Because of Sega's Dreamcast departure announcement, many third-party developers cancelled their games altogether, or stopped their development for the Dreamcast and switched focus to other systems like the PlayStation 2, with games like Half-Life and Black and White.
If Sega wasn't even going to support their own system, why should developers trust the system as a viable financial option?
Sega also promised that there would be as many as 100 more games released for the system before the Dreamcast was dead. However, after the third-party developers started jump overboard, that number steeply dropped.
And for the poor Americans the ultimate blow to the Dreamcast came last month, when Sega America announced that the U.S. version of Shenmue II was being cancelled. Instead of being released on the Dreamcast by year's end, it will now be developed on the Microsoft Xbox and released in late 2002 for the American fans.
Shenmue II was supposed to be the last great game for the Dreamcast in the U.S. market. Sega apologized, and said that its cancellation was in the best interest of the company for financial reasons. Sega US said supposedly Shenmue II would also get a wider and more proper exposure on the in the US via Microsoft Xbox. Although these are good points, and is understandable from a financial business perspective, it was still a bad move on Sega's behalf. Who would have imagined that Sega would have cancelled one of their high-anticipated games in a country that would usually get every main release first? Thankgod we in Europe weren't treated in such a way, seeing Shenmue II being released this Friday.
Sega has turned its back on many of its biggest fans with the discontinuation of the Dreamcast console, but will their fans turn their backs on Sega? No. I honestly believe that Sega fans were one of the most loyal video game fans, and albeit they may be disappointed with Sega, they are also forgiving. Unfortunately and fortunately for some, what was once contained in one box, will be split up between three consoles and one handheld.
Sega fans, unless they're wealthy enough, will have to choose the best console that suits their Sega satisfaction, as each console seem to have their own exclusive Sega games.
In the end the games are what have made Sega a great company, not its hardware. With its new third-party console-agnostic plan, Sega can leave the hardware development to someone else and focus on the games. Sega will also get better exposure on these systems, as mainstream gamers will be more likely to try a Sega game on a GameCube, PlayStation 2, or Xbox.
I have high hopes that Sega's new plan will prove to be successful, and if they can't dominate in the console market, maybe they can be the dominant force in third-party software support.
It will probably regain a lot of credibility too that was lost with the company and from that, maybe, just maybe, a Sega console in the future.
All of those last DC games are out now. I mean "those games", in Shenmue 2, Virtua Tennis and Headhunter, or so my Electronicsm Botique magazine says. The mag has loads of vouchers in, which might help me buy the games. Either way, I'm getting them...eventually!
Firebalt.
Firebalt.
WolfHound wrote:
> Anyone get the last DC Great: Shenmue II????
Yes, playing it at the moment, and it's simply magical. Astounding graphics and detail.
> Anyone get the last DC Great: Shenmue II????
Yes, playing it at the moment, and it's simply magical. Astounding graphics and detail.
It would need to better Skies of Arcadia in my opinion to be termed as 'the DC's best ever' though.
Anyone get the last DC Great: Shenmue II????
Wouldnt It be great If they do an American style price drop?for both the system and games?
Just think, all those wonderful games and a system that Is so affordable and modern!
Just think, all those wonderful games and a system that Is so affordable and modern!
that was a bit looooooooooooong
Good point though, the gaming industry has changed dramatically over the last 5 years or so with a more business approach to it, thats the only reason Sony and Microsoft have any interest!!!!!!
Sega did offer a dreamcast/DVD player bundle to compete with Sony's build in DVD player but it was on the verge of "death" by about that time and people had little interest. It was a shame to see the dreamcast go downhill after such a great performance but It's nice to know Sega are bringing their ideas to other consoles instead of going down with the dreamcast.
Good point though, the gaming industry has changed dramatically over the last 5 years or so with a more business approach to it, thats the only reason Sony and Microsoft have any interest!!!!!!
Sega did offer a dreamcast/DVD player bundle to compete with Sony's build in DVD player but it was on the verge of "death" by about that time and people had little interest. It was a shame to see the dreamcast go downhill after such a great performance but It's nice to know Sega are bringing their ideas to other consoles instead of going down with the dreamcast.
The world is a business now - everything is a business venture - and the business world is a savage industry. Television shows, despite how good they critically may be or how popular the actors in them are, can be cancelled in a heartbeat if nobody is watching. The same happens with our games magazines, remember the Video Gamer mag for a pound? Remember how great it was? Only to be cancelled. The entertainment industry can be very unforgiving, and sometimes the only guarantee for success is a good first-impression.
Much like the sports, television, and the film industry, the video game industry has been growing bigger by the year, and is quite a big money maker. Nintendo and Sony have been experiencing a lot of success with their video consoles throughout the 90s and are still going strong today.
However, for a struggling company like Sega, even its great games for their Dreamcast console, were not enough to save the wonder machine.
What went wrong to cause Sega's Dreamcast to fail as a video game console? despite all of the engineered improvements that Sega did to make it more appealing to the mainstream gamer and user-friendlier for software developers?
Believe it or not, the Sega Dreamcast was in trouble from the beginning. Despite It being a well put together kit.
Before the Dreamcast's European launch, Sega's credibility with the mainstream industry was tarnished because of the disappointments of their previous systems, the Sega Saturn and Sega CD.
There was a general sense of mistrust from the mainstream gaming community towards Sega because of this, and with the reigning success of the PlayStation and Nintendo 64, many gamers continued to support those systems. The only people who really supported the Dreamcast were the largely gamers who enjoyed Sega's other systems, and unfortunately, that is a very small minority in the gaming industry.
Think of the Sega as a popular Hollywood actor, like Kevin Costner. Some of you may be rolling your eyes at me choosing Kevin Costner as a "popular actor", which is exactly my point. Before Kevin Costner directed and starred in the over-budgeted Hollywood "bomb" Waterworld, he was a fairly popular actor. After the film was released, his credibility as an actor and director was stained. When he released his other big-budget post-apocalyptic film The Postman, many people didn't go to see it, because they felt that it was going to be another overly ambitious Hollywood silly American venture on Costner's behalf.
Today, even though Costner may star in some good film's, he's not the big name in Hollywood that he used to be.
This is the same with Sega. After years of being the underdog in the gaming industry, and after tons of bad press, especially surrounding the Sega Saturn, Sega became a company that many people scoffed at and showed little respect for. Even though the Dreamcast promised better graphics and a faster processor, many gamers rolled their eyes and returned to playing their Nintendo 64s and PlayStations. I've witnessed the rolling of eyes from friends of mine when they see that I have a Dreamcast among my healthy console line-up. "Oh, you have the Dreamcast?" they say condescendingly. They just don't understand.
But it wasn't only the gaming audience who didn't support the Dreamcast. Several powerful third-party developers like Squaresoft and Konami, chose not to support the console. As a matter of fact, Konami was supposed to release Castlevania: Resurrection, but for technical reasons the game was cancelled. However, in retrospect, Konami may have been the first developer to see that the Dreamcast was not going to be a big moneymaker, and bailed out. Some developers chose to take a "wait and see" approach, to see how well the system did before they would show support for it or were unenthusiastic about supporting the Dreamcast after the notoriety of the difficult-to-program-for Sega Saturn.
One thing that gamers today may have begun to notice with the release of next-generation consoles by Microsoft and Nintendo is that the marketing and advertising for both systems where well and truly successful, even Nintendo raving that the Gamecube is more popular than Harry Potter Is testament to that. Sega did a poor job promoting their products in the media outside of magazines compared to Nintendo.
Sega has been a struggling company for many years, and had been continually reporting losses every year that I can think of during the Dreamcast's run, and their stock was not too impressive.
I respect Sega for having the courage to go out on a limb with new and innovative titles, Samba Di Amigo for one. But I think there were too many experimental titles and not enough recognizable franchises to appeal to the mainstream audience. The Dreamcast also 'didn't' have enough sequels to popular franchises. Besides Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2, Phantasy Star Online (which wasn't really a true sequel to the RPG series), and the Dreamcast's version of Ecco the Dolphin, there weren't a lot of popular Sega titles that could catch the attention of the mainstream audience.
Why didn't Sega release an official Phantasy Star RPG sequel, or sequels to popular Sega franchises like Space Harrier, Shinobi, Hang-On, Afterburner or NiGHTS? Nintendo has a lot of success with their systems because they release a lot of franchise games that feature their most popular characters.
Sega also had too many ambitious add-on Ideas for the Dreamcast that never saw the light of day. Remember the zip drive, which would plug into the serial port of the Dreamcast, and supposedly would allow you to save information onto the zip disks instead of the VMUs? Never happened!. How about the DVD add-on that Sega announced they'd have after Sony announced that their PlayStation 2 could play DVD movie discs? Never saw the light of day!.
Sega had been criticized in the past for having too many add-ons with the Sega 32X and the Sega CD, and they repeated the same mistake with the Dreamcast with these ambitious products that never made it to store shelves. Sega made too many promises of great and innovative accessories, and delivered on nothing.
Who can forget the Dreamcast chip that was supposed to bring the ability to play Dreamcast games on Pace "set-top boxes," DVD players, and PCs? Even if that idea was still in the works, would people be able to get a hold of old Dreamcast games in 6 months to a year, without digging through bargain bins or searching online auctions? More importantly, would people care?
Ask any Sega fan what they felt earlier this year when Sega announced that they would be a platform-agnostic third-party developer and would no longer support their own Dreamcast hardware by 2002. I know from this very forum and the press, that a huge percentage were angered, confused and felt betrayed.
Because of Sega's Dreamcast departure announcement, many third-party developers cancelled their games altogether, or stopped their development for the Dreamcast and switched focus to other systems like the PlayStation 2, with games like Half-Life and Black and White.
If Sega wasn't even going to support their own system, why should developers trust the system as a viable financial option?
Sega also promised that there would be as many as 100 more games released for the system before the Dreamcast was dead. However, after the third-party developers started jump overboard, that number steeply dropped.
And for the poor Americans the ultimate blow to the Dreamcast came last month, when Sega America announced that the U.S. version of Shenmue II was being cancelled. Instead of being released on the Dreamcast by year's end, it will now be developed on the Microsoft Xbox and released in late 2002 for the American fans.
Shenmue II was supposed to be the last great game for the Dreamcast in the U.S. market. Sega apologized, and said that its cancellation was in the best interest of the company for financial reasons. Sega US said supposedly Shenmue II would also get a wider and more proper exposure on the in the US via Microsoft Xbox. Although these are good points, and is understandable from a financial business perspective, it was still a bad move on Sega's behalf. Who would have imagined that Sega would have cancelled one of their high-anticipated games in a country that would usually get every main release first? Thankgod we in Europe weren't treated in such a way, seeing Shenmue II being released this Friday.
Sega has turned its back on many of its biggest fans with the discontinuation of the Dreamcast console, but will their fans turn their backs on Sega? No. I honestly believe that Sega fans were one of the most loyal video game fans, and albeit they may be disappointed with Sega, they are also forgiving. Unfortunately and fortunately for some, what was once contained in one box, will be split up between three consoles and one handheld.
Sega fans, unless they're wealthy enough, will have to choose the best console that suits their Sega satisfaction, as each console seem to have their own exclusive Sega games.
In the end the games are what have made Sega a great company, not its hardware. With its new third-party console-agnostic plan, Sega can leave the hardware development to someone else and focus on the games. Sega will also get better exposure on these systems, as mainstream gamers will be more likely to try a Sega game on a GameCube, PlayStation 2, or Xbox.
I have high hopes that Sega's new plan will prove to be successful, and if they can't dominate in the console market, maybe they can be the dominant force in third-party software support.
It will probably regain a lot of credibility too that was lost with the company and from that, maybe, just maybe, a Sega console in the future.
Much like the sports, television, and the film industry, the video game industry has been growing bigger by the year, and is quite a big money maker. Nintendo and Sony have been experiencing a lot of success with their video consoles throughout the 90s and are still going strong today.
However, for a struggling company like Sega, even its great games for their Dreamcast console, were not enough to save the wonder machine.
What went wrong to cause Sega's Dreamcast to fail as a video game console? despite all of the engineered improvements that Sega did to make it more appealing to the mainstream gamer and user-friendlier for software developers?
Believe it or not, the Sega Dreamcast was in trouble from the beginning. Despite It being a well put together kit.
Before the Dreamcast's European launch, Sega's credibility with the mainstream industry was tarnished because of the disappointments of their previous systems, the Sega Saturn and Sega CD.
There was a general sense of mistrust from the mainstream gaming community towards Sega because of this, and with the reigning success of the PlayStation and Nintendo 64, many gamers continued to support those systems. The only people who really supported the Dreamcast were the largely gamers who enjoyed Sega's other systems, and unfortunately, that is a very small minority in the gaming industry.
Think of the Sega as a popular Hollywood actor, like Kevin Costner. Some of you may be rolling your eyes at me choosing Kevin Costner as a "popular actor", which is exactly my point. Before Kevin Costner directed and starred in the over-budgeted Hollywood "bomb" Waterworld, he was a fairly popular actor. After the film was released, his credibility as an actor and director was stained. When he released his other big-budget post-apocalyptic film The Postman, many people didn't go to see it, because they felt that it was going to be another overly ambitious Hollywood silly American venture on Costner's behalf.
Today, even though Costner may star in some good film's, he's not the big name in Hollywood that he used to be.
This is the same with Sega. After years of being the underdog in the gaming industry, and after tons of bad press, especially surrounding the Sega Saturn, Sega became a company that many people scoffed at and showed little respect for. Even though the Dreamcast promised better graphics and a faster processor, many gamers rolled their eyes and returned to playing their Nintendo 64s and PlayStations. I've witnessed the rolling of eyes from friends of mine when they see that I have a Dreamcast among my healthy console line-up. "Oh, you have the Dreamcast?" they say condescendingly. They just don't understand.
But it wasn't only the gaming audience who didn't support the Dreamcast. Several powerful third-party developers like Squaresoft and Konami, chose not to support the console. As a matter of fact, Konami was supposed to release Castlevania: Resurrection, but for technical reasons the game was cancelled. However, in retrospect, Konami may have been the first developer to see that the Dreamcast was not going to be a big moneymaker, and bailed out. Some developers chose to take a "wait and see" approach, to see how well the system did before they would show support for it or were unenthusiastic about supporting the Dreamcast after the notoriety of the difficult-to-program-for Sega Saturn.
One thing that gamers today may have begun to notice with the release of next-generation consoles by Microsoft and Nintendo is that the marketing and advertising for both systems where well and truly successful, even Nintendo raving that the Gamecube is more popular than Harry Potter Is testament to that. Sega did a poor job promoting their products in the media outside of magazines compared to Nintendo.
Sega has been a struggling company for many years, and had been continually reporting losses every year that I can think of during the Dreamcast's run, and their stock was not too impressive.
I respect Sega for having the courage to go out on a limb with new and innovative titles, Samba Di Amigo for one. But I think there were too many experimental titles and not enough recognizable franchises to appeal to the mainstream audience. The Dreamcast also 'didn't' have enough sequels to popular franchises. Besides Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2, Phantasy Star Online (which wasn't really a true sequel to the RPG series), and the Dreamcast's version of Ecco the Dolphin, there weren't a lot of popular Sega titles that could catch the attention of the mainstream audience.
Why didn't Sega release an official Phantasy Star RPG sequel, or sequels to popular Sega franchises like Space Harrier, Shinobi, Hang-On, Afterburner or NiGHTS? Nintendo has a lot of success with their systems because they release a lot of franchise games that feature their most popular characters.
Sega also had too many ambitious add-on Ideas for the Dreamcast that never saw the light of day. Remember the zip drive, which would plug into the serial port of the Dreamcast, and supposedly would allow you to save information onto the zip disks instead of the VMUs? Never happened!. How about the DVD add-on that Sega announced they'd have after Sony announced that their PlayStation 2 could play DVD movie discs? Never saw the light of day!.
Sega had been criticized in the past for having too many add-ons with the Sega 32X and the Sega CD, and they repeated the same mistake with the Dreamcast with these ambitious products that never made it to store shelves. Sega made too many promises of great and innovative accessories, and delivered on nothing.
Who can forget the Dreamcast chip that was supposed to bring the ability to play Dreamcast games on Pace "set-top boxes," DVD players, and PCs? Even if that idea was still in the works, would people be able to get a hold of old Dreamcast games in 6 months to a year, without digging through bargain bins or searching online auctions? More importantly, would people care?
Ask any Sega fan what they felt earlier this year when Sega announced that they would be a platform-agnostic third-party developer and would no longer support their own Dreamcast hardware by 2002. I know from this very forum and the press, that a huge percentage were angered, confused and felt betrayed.
Because of Sega's Dreamcast departure announcement, many third-party developers cancelled their games altogether, or stopped their development for the Dreamcast and switched focus to other systems like the PlayStation 2, with games like Half-Life and Black and White.
If Sega wasn't even going to support their own system, why should developers trust the system as a viable financial option?
Sega also promised that there would be as many as 100 more games released for the system before the Dreamcast was dead. However, after the third-party developers started jump overboard, that number steeply dropped.
And for the poor Americans the ultimate blow to the Dreamcast came last month, when Sega America announced that the U.S. version of Shenmue II was being cancelled. Instead of being released on the Dreamcast by year's end, it will now be developed on the Microsoft Xbox and released in late 2002 for the American fans.
Shenmue II was supposed to be the last great game for the Dreamcast in the U.S. market. Sega apologized, and said that its cancellation was in the best interest of the company for financial reasons. Sega US said supposedly Shenmue II would also get a wider and more proper exposure on the in the US via Microsoft Xbox. Although these are good points, and is understandable from a financial business perspective, it was still a bad move on Sega's behalf. Who would have imagined that Sega would have cancelled one of their high-anticipated games in a country that would usually get every main release first? Thankgod we in Europe weren't treated in such a way, seeing Shenmue II being released this Friday.
Sega has turned its back on many of its biggest fans with the discontinuation of the Dreamcast console, but will their fans turn their backs on Sega? No. I honestly believe that Sega fans were one of the most loyal video game fans, and albeit they may be disappointed with Sega, they are also forgiving. Unfortunately and fortunately for some, what was once contained in one box, will be split up between three consoles and one handheld.
Sega fans, unless they're wealthy enough, will have to choose the best console that suits their Sega satisfaction, as each console seem to have their own exclusive Sega games.
In the end the games are what have made Sega a great company, not its hardware. With its new third-party console-agnostic plan, Sega can leave the hardware development to someone else and focus on the games. Sega will also get better exposure on these systems, as mainstream gamers will be more likely to try a Sega game on a GameCube, PlayStation 2, or Xbox.
I have high hopes that Sega's new plan will prove to be successful, and if they can't dominate in the console market, maybe they can be the dominant force in third-party software support.
It will probably regain a lot of credibility too that was lost with the company and from that, maybe, just maybe, a Sega console in the future.