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this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2024
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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.