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this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2024
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Sega was already in dire financial straits after the Saturn, so they panicked during the Dreamcast and ended the console’s life cycle very early making developers abandon it within just a couple years.
I’m not sure if there’s anything they could have done differently to be honest. Sony pushed them over the edge with the price war during the Saturn, which was very inefficiently built in comparison making their production costs way higher than that of their competitors. If I remember correctly they were losing about $100 per unit before PSX did its first (very early) $50 price drop and they had to keep up, so that became -$150/ea before the console was even a year old. It was disastrous.
They released 32x, Sega Genesis, then Sega Saturn so freaking close to each other that really left a bad taste in everyone's mouth.
Dreamcast came out with Sonic, Shenmue, Power Stone and then the most perfect version of Marvel Vs Capcom 2 and started to become attractive.
Then everyone discovered how to pirate Dreamcast games. Like it was so stupidly easy. People in my campus started giving copied Dreamcast games away.
No one is saying Dreamcast didn’t have a great library. The problem was Sega was on the brink of financial ruin when it launched and it simply didn’t move units due to its price point, awkward timing between consoles, and as you said prior saturation with their consoles.
It was actually the opposite problem... they sold plenty of hardware. But they lost money on every sale and didn't make it back on software purchases as was the plan.
In fact, the Dreamcast had sold more than the Xbox and Gamecube combined for the first several years of their lifespan.
There was also the playstation 2 releasing about 6 months after the dreamcast, with dvd capabilities, when dvd players were expensive as fuck. People were using them as a DVD player. Basically the same reason the playstation 3 sold decently at all in it's first years.
I've heard stories of people buying or being encouraged to buy a PS1 because it also played CDs.
Never heard of that. Audio cd's have been around for a while by then. And cd players weren't expensive. But I could be wrong. I was not really in to consoles at that point.
I wasn't around then but i think the stories I heard was "kid wants his own cd player and gaming console so he buys a PS1"
the Xbox was a financial disaster that was basically a massive loss leader by a larger company that could absorb it just to tee themselves up for next generation. Microsoft’s Xbox division was $2bill in the red when it was all said and done.
the GameCube sold the worst of all the big 3 consoles (Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo) at 21 mill total. Xbox 24mill. The Dreamcast sold just 9mill. That’s less than half of the 3rd worst selling system.
You’re cherry picking your numbers it seems to ignore Dreamcast’s count at 9mill units sold. First years are only part of the story. The story is they did very poorly.
Your comparisons are not propping up the Dreamcast. The fact that it did worse than GameCube and Xbox despite the fact that both did not do well at all just further indicates how disastrous it was.
I remember nobody trusting Sega to not abandon yet another console after a year like all the others so a lot of people stopped buying their brand.
Sega was too early with several innovations like online game downloads, which meant they weren't profitable enough. Technically however they were ages ahead of the competition who later gladly absorbed their knowledge.
The Sega Saturn is a prime example of how that was not the case. They brute forced it and it cost a fortune as a result. Sony essentially matched it with generic parts for cheaper and developed it in a shorter amount of time along side them, the Saturn build did not directly inform its development.
Edit: in one of the books I read on this subject - I think it was either Replay or Console Wars, there is a great account of how when the Saturn dropped somy was very nervous because it was out well before the PlayStation was released. They immediately grabbed one and disassembled it, only to discover the monstrosity under the hood that made them feel very secure in their decisions. The two dedicated chips getting 3D to work right out the gate drove the cost up immensely. They knew they didn’t need to beat Sega to market because they were bleeding cash at an unbelievable rate. The game sales would never cover that.
Wasn't the deeper story on this a bit more sad? I thought Sega made a bunch of rash idiotic decisions with their product lines, not originally because of Nintendo and Sony, but because of NeoGeo?
They were so convinced NeoGeo was going to be the be all end all of gaming, both home and arcade, so they shotgunned a bunch of ideas out then panic killed several of them?
Only decision Sega made in direct response to their competitors was the price drop after Sony kind of forced them to. I didn’t really say anything beyond that.
As for NeoGeo yeah big missteps/misinterpreting of the home gaming market’s direction
Ahh no, not saying you were wrong, just checking my decrepit old memory.
Word
wtf did happen w neogeo