Does anyone else blame PS2 for Dreamcasts Death?

[50inchDLP]

I blame Sony and the PS2 alone for DC's death.

with all the flat out LIES they told about what the PS2 was going to be. I have an issue of PSM from right after PS2 was announced that made like the PS2 was going to have online features that make the current PSN and Xbox live look dated. did it ever happen?? nope, they just said it to counter the DCs online and seganets MTV launch.

Also look at all the flatout BULLSHOTS of PS2 games, tekken Gran Turismo 2000, dark cloud, almost every game showed some crazy shot that looks more like PS3. FF8 recreation anyone?! Sony lied and made people hesitate on getting a Dreamcast. its the truth, i was in high school back then and almost everyone said they would get a DC but the PS2 was "GOING TO BE SO MUCH BETTER" Sony with foolish statements like "ps2 will be infinitely powerful!" "we can render individual hair on characters heads" "125 million polygons!"they said that! so sorry for the ps2 hate but i see the ps2 as holding gaming back years with its death grip on the business.

[Dr. Pariolo]

Yeah i also blame it. I think if the ps2 had the success it had its because of the mindless sony fanboys that were born because of the ps1, which had a huge impact. And when the PS2 was announced most of them must have been thinking "OMFGGG SONY IS RELEASING ANOTHER MAGICAL CONSOLE, OMG OMG LETS NOT EVEN LOOK AT THE ALTERNATIVES", blinded by that kind of thoughts, they werent not aware of the dreamcast's power.

[MikeStutzzzz]

i don't blame them. its the sega of america's CEO. and the fact that most of their games are arcade. their sport series are amazing and still is. but what hurt them was the fact that they had gd-roms instead of dvd's. as far as graphics go. i dont think they were that much different. if devolopers would maximize on the dreamcast then there would be no problem. Nightmare creatures II should have had better graphics. im not sure but i think resident evil's improved that background but not much on the graphics, and one think i do not understand is why dident they release a seccond model controller with duel analog. is it really that hard to design a controller for the fps games, and i think ps1 had 2 analogs why dident sega imrove on that idea.

[TheCoolinator]

Sega's to blame for their mismanagement of the 32X, Sega-CD, and the Saturn which in turn led to the death of the DC.

Sony would of sold more PS2's than Dreamcasts no matter what happened, the only thing that would of gone differently if Sega had enough funds would be to keep the DC afloat until the next generation hit. Just like Sony and Microsoft are doing now with their present consoles.

[Bob Dobbs]

I look at it a little bit differently...

I believe the only thing that helps the PS2 is that it had a DVD drive and (mostly in Japan) this would be a huge selling point being it was truly a home entertainment system. VCD's and DivX were popular in Asia, but not here in the US. The Dreamcast was engineered during the US "DVD vs. DivX" battle (1998) in which Sega's only technical oversight did make a it a choice factor amongst people who wanted a game system and a DVD player (very expensive for people mostly of Japan being the price of a DVD player alone would stop them from buying any game system). Nintendo still had a Mario following, so Sega was not going to get them to cross over the the Dreamcast.

The Sony fanboy thinks the Sony PS2 would be better because...
1. It had DVD support (what's a DivX?)
2. Madden Football (who ever heard of NFL2k?)
3. It's a SONY!
4. Saturn sucks, why should the Dreamcast be any better!
5. What's a VMU?
6. Besides Madden Football, who plays online when a PC does that.

[MikeStutzzzz]

all dreamcst had to do was
1. Make different controller with 2 analogs (if the wii does it now so could have the dreamcast)
2. push the system to the max (1st year ps2 games look like shit thats all thats too is)
3. RPG's (seems like all the good ones were stuck in japan)
4. goes with 3 translate the good games. (Fatalgrind or somthing like that would have sold millions)
5. Don't be a bitch that a game doesn't fit on 1gd for gods sake (who cares if sony has dvd, 1dvd = 2 or 3 cdr right? well just put it on 2-3 cdr)

[Tamikaze]

The Playstation brand certainly played its part in the SEGA/Dreamcast death, but the company itself was on the verge of killing itself anyway with the internal political battle between SEGA Japan and SEGA America which had been going on since the Genesis/Megadrive days. Its nice that we can sit back today and think up ways on how the Dreamcast could of been saved but personally i believe nothing would of saved the console from its fate. The PS2 played its part, but what about the XBOX and the Gamecube? Although they didn't fare much better, would the Dreamcast be able to do battle with them as well as the PS2?

But the Dreamcast has something the PS2 shall never have!

[spinksy]

From my own eperience from when the DC was out and the PS2 had just hit the shelves - it seemed to be the lack of DVD support!

I know a few mates who were set to get DC's then changed there mind at last minute due to being able to have a DVD aswell as a games console!

I was never bothered about that (DVD support) but I remember at the time being annoyed by the fact that so many people were!

[MikeStutzzzz]

well considering how shitty vhs tapes were i bet they used that as an excuse to get a ps2 if i remember we bought one of the new ones when they came out it was like 150 (the dvd player that is)

[MrSega]

The Playstation brand certainly played its part in the SEGA/Dreamcast death, but the company itself was on the verge of killing itself anyway with the internal political battle between SEGA Japan and SEGA America which had been going on since the Genesis/Megadrive days. Its nice that we can sit back today and think up ways on how the Dreamcast could of been saved but personally i believe nothing would of saved the console from its fate. The PS2 played its part, but what about the XBOX and the Gamecube? Although they didn't fare much better, would the Dreamcast be able to do battle with them as well as the PS2?

But the Dreamcast has something the PS2 shall never have!

I partly blame PS2 for phasing out Dreamcast but what I'm about to do is present the true full story of Dreamcast in its entirety:


The year is 1997; SEGA/CSK isnt doing too well financially. The mismanagement and internal civil war at SEGA's American division is catching up with the company. To make matters worse, the Saturn is selling poorly in the west despite its strong following in Japan. On top of that, the 16-bit market is dead and SEGA of Americas revenue is drying up. Bernie "Asstard" Stolar the CEO of SOA begins to pressure SEGA of Japan to begin work on Saturns successor by refusing to let dozens of great Japanese Saturn games get exported to the states. Around this time, Isao Okawa the new CEO of SEGA orders the company to begin work on a new system codenamed Dural. Several of SEGAs R&D divisions come up with several hardware chipsets for what would become project Katana, including Black Belt a 128-bit powered DVD machine, SEGA sought out NEC, Image Technologies, and ATI for CPU and GPU chipsets. Due to their worsening finical condition and because of time constraints, SEGA turned once again to Hitachi for help who in turn supplied SEGA with its new 128-bit core CPU system SH-4 in which SEGA named the Naomi arcade board finally breeding the code name Katana. SEGA also acquired the PowerVR2 GPU for graphics to cut cost, SEGA invented GD-ROM instead of using DVD-ROM.


By the early part of 1998, SEGA was ready to begin rolling out R&D for Katana in which it decided to call Dreamcast the console would begin rolling out on production lines in October 1998 in time for its February 5,1999 launch "Dreamcast No Kinyobi" Dreamcast Friday. But for some reason, Okawa ordered the first line of Dreamcasts to be shipped out on Black Friday 1998. The sudden rushed launch of November 27, 1998 proved to be problematic for Sega. The games were half-finished, and buggy. Despite its 18,999 yen price tag the poor quality of launch titles hurt Japanese consumers along with a family friendly marketing campaign Sega also failed to recognized that there was still demand for the Sega Saturn in Japan. Saturn sales remained strong, Dreamcast sales were small and minuscule.


Neal Robinson was put in charge of the US marketing of Dreamcast in early 1999, he petitioned the company to fire his boss Bernie and talked Naoya Tsurumi into terminating Bernie's contract in May 1999. Tsurumi appointed Peter Moore as CEO of Sega of America who begged EA to support Dreamcast. But EA refused to after Stolar snubbed them in '98 about developing a Madden title for DC. As hype begin building for Dreamcast, Yuji Naka volunteered to fly to San Francisco to fix the bugs in Sonic Adventure in time for the September US launch of Dreamcast.

SEGA of Americas reputation was shot pretty badly by then and Dreamcast was getting mixed press. But SEGA publicly announced Stolars termination in mid July which finally helped fuel positive hype for Dreamcast. Meanwhile in Japan, Sony announced the Playstation 2 and SEGA gulped hard. The Dreamcast continued to sell poorly in Japan, and to add insult to injury Okawa decided to bankrupt the company by pouring mad dollars into DC accessories that were highly priced such as a digital camera, watch, zip-drives, DVD adds on and what not. SEGA of America remained optimistic that the DC was going to succeed. On September 9, 1999 the US release of Dreamcast hit big, selling 300,000 units out in 24 hours, 700,000 its first week and earning $98.0 million on its first day of availability. Dreamcast sales remained strong in America, and fared better than expected in Europe. As the overhype of PS2 build, SEGA held their breath, The March 4, 2000 Japanese launch of PS2 sealed the fate of Dreamcast in Japan and demand for it fell and the Saturn was finally retired.

Throughout 2000, SEGA realized that time was running out. Nintendo was already ready to roll out GameCube and Microsoft was getting into the game with Xbox. Dreamcast fared strongly in the west, but the GD-Rom and non sealed DC titles made piracy easy, hurting software sales. SOA held together, they knew things were getting dire in Japan as DC sales remained poor. By the time PS2 hit the states, SEGA realized they had once more ace in the hole, the overhype cut PS2s launch shipments for launch and SEGA was finally ready to introduce its online gaming SEGA Net. Isao Okawa however was secretly moving SEGA toward software and talked extensively about selling his company to Microsoft, Toshiba and Hitachi just to name a few. By the end of 2000, SEGA of Japan was ready throw in the towel, Okawa told the company his plans and Yuji Naka and the rest of the company begged Okawa to change his mind wanting SEGA to focus all of its energy on keeping Dreamcast alive. Okawa revealed that he was dying of cancer. In early 2001, SEGA finally gave up and announced its departure from the hardware market. By 2002, the Dreamcast had sold close to 22 million units worldwide. That is NOT considered a failure! Yet because PS2 has sold many people believe this. If the Dreamcast had been around longer that would be considered lackluster. But remember the DC was only around for 3 years, 22 million is exceptional.


In Japan a DC title would be released once a year until 2006, thats because SEGA liquidated its Japanese Dreamcast retail stock in 2001. SOA did not and therefore still have dozens of DCs in a warehouse.


Now in 2010, SEGA is re-emerging. The company is now profitable and revenue is returning ,yet there's some skepticism because SEGA is not saying anything, in 2007-2008 they ruled out a new console but in 2009-2010 they havent explained away why they were so busy issuing patents for use and the RingEdge and RingWide hardwares true purpose both remain a mystery. Yeah, some are trying to say its just arcade hardware, but dont even realize that SEGA always bases consoles off of arcade boards.

Not that I'm planning on getting into that right now, about 10-14 days before E3, I plan on starting a SEGA speculation topic.