Why did the Dreamcast fail?

[Mormolyce]

Marketing, glut of sega consoles, bad timing... all came together to crush sega.
Now, as for worst controller... how is anyone saying anything other than n64? A controller literally designed to be held by three hands simultaneously. Who came up with that?

I actually like the N64 controller! Distinctive and it fit so nicely in the hand. Although you're right, they should've just removed the D-pad arm.

Personally I've always hated the PS controllers. Why Sony has never redesigned them is a mystery to me.

[Skarest]

Comes down to two things in my mind.

1) The Sega name was suffering. Nintendo has been going strong on their name for years and Sony jumped into the console world with a bang.

2) Timing. Sadly, they were a day late, but not a dollar short. The Dreamcast, imho, was an amazing system. One of my favorite games of all time, Skies of Arcadia, came from that system. However, it could never build up the loyal fan base in a large enough numbers like Sony or Nintendo.

[Silhouette of Seraphim]

I liked the Dreamcast games.

Getting them to actually work was a whole other thing.

[Lazy Gecko]

1. Sony's ridiculous amount of hype for the PS2.
2. No support from EA because they didn't want to compete with Sega's own sports brands.
3. Too ahead of its time. Dreamcast had a big focus on online functionality which was something most console players didn't bother with yet. Had to wait as far as the Xbox 360 for online relevance to really kick off. Sony kind of made the same blunder with the PS2 but it hurt Sega a lot more, what with modems included in the hardware.

[suresh0t]

hehe i still own an old genisis and a dreamcast. one of the reasons they stopped making it i believe was because of piracy. the console wasnt protected against copied games so there was no need for mods, just burn and play. i never went for sony's products except for the first psp which turned out to be a big disappointment for me, it's always overhyped hardware "hey, we've got cd-rom/hey, we've got dvd/hey check this shish out, we've got a 7core cell cpu now" i dont care about silly hardware, even dreamcast with his stuff had sick gfx and steady 60 fps which the ps2 didnt have.

good stuff always get discontinued by some crappy error. Look at the amiga, crazy gfx sick sound multitasking etc etc got discontinued because they never upgraded their system. win95 totally destroyed that old hag which is a shame cause till today im still and amiga/sega fan because they gave us stuff back then which people still havent mastered atm.

tho, i must say, sega f'd up their customers with all the extras you could buy for the genisis, the cd/x32 and short after the x32 addon for the genisis they released the sega saturn lol

tho... there's 1 thing i've never understood, if the atari lynx and sega gamegear were both colorscreen handheld consoles how did nintendo dominate all those years with a grey/greenscreen gameboy. mysteries of the world *spooky noise*

[Deleted]

my friend had a dreamcast.. so many awesome nights playing power stone.

[GKLeatherCraft]

Why did the Dreamcast have to fail? I never understood this. I thought it was a hell of a video game system. It was very well made. hell you cant even get a x-box to last 1 year. but i still have a dreamcast that works as good as the day i got it.

Well you clearly don't know how to use Consoles if you can't get an Xbox to last 1 year, i got a 360 when it first came out, which my brother now uses, guess what, Works fine, i brought my other brother 1 about 4 years ago, he still uses, And i brought myself one 2years ago that was pi**ed in by my cat, and thrown off the shelf several times by my 2year old, yet it still works, so please, Take your crap and leave man!

But anyway, Yes the Dreamcast was a nice console, but released so soon before the PS2 sealed its fate=/

[Deleted]

Marketing, glut of sega consoles, bad timing... all came together to crush sega.
Now, as for worst controller... how is anyone saying anything other than n64? A controller literally designed to be held by three hands simultaneously. Who came up with that?

not not really, most of the games didnt have you using analogue and d-pad simultaneously, imo the N64 controller is one the most comfortable.

[Hraklea]

Because DVD > GD.

[dariusz2k]

You could download and burn their games to standard CD-R's without modding the system. That's the real reason. The other reason being that technology was too far behind and developing for the system was difficult, so most of the games for Dreamcast were made by Sega. With console marketing as well you sell the console cheaper than it's worth in the hopes that people will buy the games to make up the difference. That added to the fact that Sega was not only selling the console cheaper but making the games and that you could download and burn the games lead to the death of the Dreamcast.

[Apokalypse]

As far as I'm concerned, DC failed due to being at the wrong place at the wrong time. With the advent of the PS2 and lack of copy protection, it was a recipe for disaster.

[vindicatorx]

It lacked third party gaming companies support is why I loved my Dreamcast it was an awesome system and way better than the PS2 was it just lack support by third party developers.

[Deleted]

they were over priced, in a time when video games were mainly targeted at children and young adults, no one of that age group could really afford the price - or at least parents couldnt justify paying that much for a christmas present for there child, PS1 was cheap , had tons of games and everyone was getting them chipped and playing pirate games - so the dreamcast couldnt compete

[prestilence]

The Dreamcast died to timing. Nintendo had three new devices they had at nearly 50% completion at the time of release. For the Sega Dreamcast, it was the Gamecube that rivaled it. While Sony and Xbox both having 2-3 new console devices themselves under development (xbox, xbox360, PS2, PS3) so if you have noticed whenever a console is released that a rival company also releases a console. That's why at this point there really is no new tech we can put into our current console based games, and the comparison of console changes to game changes means that we can elaborate actual games better without needing some thousand dollar console.

At the time Nintendo dominated the gaming market since they developed their own work and was also the distributor. So for Sega to release a console at the same time as the gaming leader was just suicide. They didnt make nearly enough revenue from the Dreamcast to even begin the R&D on a new console to keep up with microsoft, and sony. That's why alot of the similar components are now utilized in the Microsoft Xbox. For instance the ability to use single cell shading with and without compression. It allows for MASSIVE amounts of additional data (similar to the difference of Blue ray and DvD) which led to the advancements in the individual games once consoles were powerful enough to support the new room for the data.

So in all actuality, Dreamcast was killed by Nintendo, but in all fairness theres a little bit of Dreamcast inside the Xbox and alot of our present day tech. I still have my Dreamcast

[Deleted]

Watch and learn.

Nice vid, thanks for posting!

[Deleted]

Most likely due to timing of when the console was released i.e being far too early. I would also probably say that the games were very easy to pirate as well.

[Kelimbror]

I liked the Dreamcast games.

Getting them to actually work was a whole other thing.

Yeah I don't know why people thought this was a high quality system. My dreamcast broke in the first month and so did my friend's. I normally can take apart and fix stuff like that, but I kept that thing for 5 years and could never get it to even turn on anymore. Biggest pile of crap ever.

The games looked great at the time though...for like the 5 days I saw them.

[Shinzai]

Because for SEGA to be good takes AGES.

Seriously. If the system had more license freedom for designers/developers like the PS2, it probably would've lasted a lot, lot longer. It was a genuinely good system, but with little software support outside of SEGA's own titles and a few arcade titles.

[halmotors]

lol @ the 'Sega is like Ike Turner' analogy. So true...

[Malkhor]

Because for SEGA to be good takes AGES.

Seriously. If the system had more license freedom for designers/developers like the PS2, it probably would've lasted a lot, lot longer. It was a genuinely good system, but with little software support outside of SEGA's own titles and a few arcade titles.

I see what you did there. anyway i never owned one, but the games i've seen on it seemed pretty cool. ;/