Dreamcast-Talk.com

Bayless is a little more open to the idea of a triumphant return - although he admits that things have changed since the glory days of the Mega Drive. "This industry isn't static - far from it. We're in the Wild West right now and people are trying all kinds of crazy stuff because they can. I absolutely guarantee new stuff will emerge from all that chaos. Could that include new Sega hardware? Of course, but it's not really about that - it's about engagement and value. As my Depression Era salesman grandfather used to say, 'Nobody makes money until someone sells something.' I'd paraphrase that as, 'First you have to show people something they want to buy.' If I were invited to advise Sega on moving back into hardware, I'd start by asking one question: What will you do better than anyone else in the world?"

Regular readers of DCTALK shall no doubt be aware that the answer is RTRT (RealTime Ray Tracing)

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012- ... nterprises

stu, where are you now?

Dan Kuso wrote:

Bayless is a little more open to the idea of a triumphant return - although he admits that things have changed since the glory days of the Mega Drive. "This industry isn't static - far from it. We're in the Wild West right now and people are trying all kinds of crazy stuff because they can. I absolutely guarantee new stuff will emerge from all that chaos. Could that include new Sega hardware? Of course, but it's not really about that - it's about engagement and value. As my Depression Era salesman grandfather used to say, 'Nobody makes money until someone sells something.' I'd paraphrase that as, 'First you have to show people something they want to buy.' If I were invited to advise Sega on moving back into hardware, I'd start by asking one question: What will you do better than anyone else in the world?"

Regular readers of DCTALK shall no doubt be aware that the answer is RTRT (RealTime Ray Tracing)

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012- ... nterprises

stu, where are you now?

Oh look a troll!





Quote: ""There is no future in selling hardware," replies Brogan emphatically. "In any market, through competition, the hardware eventually becomes a commodity. The future is in software. Sega's fault was to think that its core business was selling consoles, but consoles tend to be a one-time buy for most consumers, until the next version comes along. Software is a repeat purchase, so there's far more profit in it. If a company has to sell hardware then it should only be to leverage software, even if that means taking a hit on the hardware. I think some of the senior people in Sega never really understood that."

How true.

They failed for 2 reasons and 2 reasons only...

- Sony's PS2 ad campaign and brand recognition.

- DC backups killing software sales.

Nuff said.

elmagicochrisg wrote:They failed for 2 reasons and 2 reasons only...

- Sony's PS2 ad campaign and brand recognition.

- DC backups killing software sales.

Nuff said.

That backups thing is pretty debatable. There weren't any Dreamcast releases on the net until mid 2000. Sega killed the DC in January of 2001. If piracy killed the Dreamcast, it would've had to be a damn near 100% piracy rate to kill it in that amount of time, and that just didn't happen, especially with internet speeds then.

Comrade Snarky wrote:

elmagicochrisg wrote:They failed for 2 reasons and 2 reasons only...

- Sony's PS2 ad campaign and brand recognition.

- DC backups killing software sales.

Nuff said.

That backups thing is pretty debatable. There weren't any Dreamcast releases on the net until mid 2000. Sega killed the DC in January of 2001. If piracy killed the Dreamcast, it would've had to be a damn near 100% piracy rate to kill it in that amount of time, and that just didn't happen, especially with internet speeds then.

"that backups thing" isn't really debatable. I remember during school, at that time (2000/2001), kids would have lists of dreamcast games they would "burn" for people for the right price. That price? 5 dollars a game; 10 dollars for 3 games. Yeah, "that backups thing" kinda killed it. At least for me (and all the other students at my school).

elmagicochrisg wrote:They failed for 2 reasons and 2 reasons only...

- Sony's PS2 ad campaign and brand recognition.

- DC backups killing software sales.

Nuff said.

The first reason is very true, also Sony hyped the PS2 to almost a ridiculous level, with talk of the "Emotion Engine" and promising Toy Story quality graphics etc.
Of course when it came out the 1st generation of games really didn't look that great and weren't as good as the Dreamcast games, (I'm thinking specifically of Ridge Racer 5 - that game didn't look that much better than Ridge Racer Type 4 running on the PS1!). Unfortunately the Playstation's massive brand awareness at the time and the huge advertising campaign Sony ran blew Sega away.

The when you add in the way that Sega bungled the transition from 16 bit to the 32 bit machines (32X and Saturn), a lot of people remembered that debacle too.

I remember being distinctly unimpressed by the look of the PS2 and the 1st games that came out for it and figured I would get a Dreamcast, since it seemed more like a traditional console and the games like Sonic Adventure and Soul Calibur looked awesome, however at the time I had really lost interest in console gaming and had moved more in to PC games in a big way, unfortunately when I finally got back in to console gaming and wanted a DC, Sega announced they were ending production.

elmagicochrisg wrote:They failed for 2 reasons and 2 reasons only...

- Sony's PS2 ad campaign and brand recognition.

- DC backups killing software sales.

Nuff said.

I know this is probably a "figure of speech," but sega clearly made more than 2 mistakes

Comrade Snarky wrote:If piracy killed the Dreamcast, it would've had to be a damn near 100% piracy rate to kill it in that amount of time, and that just didn't happen, especially with internet speeds then.

You are seriously underestimating the pirate scene we had back in the days.

And yes, there was a near 100 percent piracy rate once they figured out how to make backups. Don't believe me? Ask a few people that worked in game shops around that time. Dreamcast sales went completely flat as soon as Utopia cracked the system...

everynewday84 wrote:I know this is probably a "figure of speech," but sega clearly made more than 2 mistakes

True, but those 2 were the major reasons for the DC's downfall...

elmagicochrisg wrote:

Comrade Snarky wrote:If piracy killed the Dreamcast, it would've had to be a damn near 100% piracy rate to kill it in that amount of time, and that just didn't happen, especially with internet speeds then.

You are seriously underestimating the pirate scene we had back in the days.

And yes, there was a near 100 percent piracy rate once they figured out how to make backups. Don't believe me? Ask a few people that worked in game shops around that time. Dreamcast sales went completely flat as soon as Utopia cracked the system...

everynewday84 wrote:I know this is probably a "figure of speech," but sega clearly made more than 2 mistakes

True, but those 2 were the major reasons for the DC's downfall...

Believe me I've been around the scene long enough to know about the scene then and its implications. You're still overestimating piracy's impact though. Shenmue of all games managed sales of over 1 million copies and it came out after Kalisto had simplified the Utopia method further by creating selfboot discs. There's also the fact that the PlayStation 2 would've received massive hype at E3 that only built over the summer and the actual launch of the PlayStation 2.