Why do you think the Dreamcast failed?

Rand Linden · Post by **Rand Linden** » Sun May 30, 2004 6:50 pm

I agree with Kron completely.

Piracy has been FAR simpler with DC than with any other system to date, save for PC.

Rand.

The OK Pope · Post by **The OK Pope** » Sun May 30, 2004 8:12 pm

Yet PC has still been a success. Xbox has had its fair share of warez, using simple software methods to exploit the Xbox. It's still been fairly successful.

Post by **Christuserloeser** » Sun May 30, 2004 8:36 pm

A friend of mine still wants to buy a DC because of the ease of copying games...

I brought my DC because of NesterDC, Bleem!cast, SNK/Capcom and Sh'mups when it was already clear that it wouldn't be produced that much longer.

My younger brother had brought almost all games for DC ever released. All ppl I knew have arround 10 original games or more for it, that's far more than every PS2/xBox user I've ever met.

*No/bad advertisement!
*Bad start-up titles in Japan: VF3 had no 2Player mode, Sega Rally 2 was a bad WinCE PC port and had bad and very unstable frame rate (European version 20% slower)
*Online decision for Europe was uncertain til the month the DC was actually released and it included only 28K modem! They thought about one version without modem and one with modem

*Sony killed Bleem!cast, Microsoft killed the Dreamcast, SEGA let's them do it.
*3rd party companies and specially SEGA knew there couldn't be more than two good selling consoles and they also knew PS2 would be a huge success soon then xBox from MS, which have a lot of money, and Nintendo had Myamoto (Mario, Zelda etc) and the cheapest console, like they used to have. So they feared the fight, changed strategy and restructured, because the arcade market collapsed some years before too and there weren't other sources for earning some money (GBA, Sony Music, MS Windows)

Chris

farrell2k · Post by **farrell2k** » Sun May 30, 2004 10:21 pm

This whole warez argument seems like it couldn't possibly have contributed too much to the downfall of the DC. Sega sold a little of 4 million units in the states. I CANNOT possibly imagine that a majority of owners were downloading games instead of buying them. I doubt the majority of DC owners even had broadband access. Even today, 7 out of 10 people with Inet access at home are still dial-up. I know that NO ONE has any solid numbers, but It just doesn't make sense to me. Didn't quite a few DC titles even outsell PS2 titles,even in 2000, after Sega announced that it was stopping production of he DC?

Ian Micheal · Post by **Ian Micheal** » Mon May 31, 2004 3:36 am

Rand Linden wrote:I agree with Kron completely.

Piracy has been FAR simpler with DC than with any other system to date, save for PC.

Rand.

I agree with this. not going to bother trying to tell people the truth any more.

like you told me they dont listen.

Rand Linden · Post by **Rand Linden** » Mon May 31, 2004 6:07 am

Most people listen, some people hear, a few don't bother, and others aren't worth it.

Rand.

MystiK · Post by **MystiK** » Mon May 31, 2004 9:51 pm

i agree with..

farrell?
piracy was not much of a factor and wasnt the easiest at all for the DC

i remember when the famicom was big in hong kong EVERYONE pirated. They even sold disks in stores. Originals sold too but i'm sure copied disks outsold them. Famicom piracy was probably the biggest ever. They had a machine that was freely available for purchase that did nothing but copy original games. It became a
business there. Did the famicom fail? It surely had more games than the DC and a longer lifespan. And this is with competition from other systems and everything.
Piracy has ALWAYS been around and it is not the main cause of failure for anything.

As i've said before piracy can HELP sales so to say piracy was the strongest blow towards the fall of the dreamcast is just not making sense.

So far i agree with kron (except for piracy) and chainfist with the DVD thing.

Most people listen, some people hear, a few don't bother, and others aren't worth it.

you're not excluding yourself from those stereotypes are you

Ian Micheal · Post by **Ian Micheal** » Mon May 31, 2004 10:19 pm

Well you just will not listen the truth is warez was the major factor on the dreamcast Deal with it.

MystiK · Post by **MystiK** » Mon May 31, 2004 10:26 pm

Well you just will not listen

you yourself are guilty of that

warez was the major factor on the dreamcast Deal with it.

that's like saying the actions of english liberals led to the end of slavery. It was a contributing factor, but not the sole, kill-shot...at all.

Ian Micheal · Post by **Ian Micheal** » Mon May 31, 2004 10:43 pm

For the last time and in bold due to your eyes not being able to read the 100% facts. I have spoken to ex sega developers on this and this is the facts every time. Read it understand it and stop painting this with the xbox ps1 did ok mumbo jumbo.

Sega banked on 100% zero wares due to the gdrom not being copy-able.They over spent banking on 100% profit on lic fee's on each game.

They lost money on each Dreamcast sold because they put the price so low and tryed to gain every thing back throu the uncopyable software.

This failed the money never came back they had to pull it not to go under.

Warez was the biggest factor in the dreamcasts being pulled.

Week it was pulled it was outselling and doing well but sega was losing money still due to the rempant warez of games. There were making nothing back on software = losing money the hardware was selling at a loss. Warez was making the hardware sell more again at a loss. games were not being sold in the numbers that matched the sales of the machine at the end of it's life.

Please read this and get it in to your head. Im correct on this i know it to be a fact from the horses mouth. You keep saying this or that you are not correct this is the facts layed out to me by a ex sega developer. Why are you saying it's not correct.

This case is not the ps1 it's not the xbox it's not the pc.

It was not the same

Now does it sink in?

farrell2k · Post by **farrell2k** » Mon May 31, 2004 11:40 pm

Piracy has never taken down a video game system, and likely never will; However, low system sales, and fierce competition from other more financially stable companies will. Despite what you believe, it is not likely that more than 10-15 percent of all DC owners were actively warezing games. The hype of other consoles, namely the PS2, the refusal of big-time 3rd party developers (EA) to develope for a system that they didnt believe would sell, and the fact that some retailers even refused to carry the DC was what killed it. K-mart stopped selling it in because sales were terrible. The DCs downfall was its low sales. When Kmart dropped the DC in 2000, Sega had ONLY sold about 7 Million units, half of which were in the us. They just couldn't get enough of them out there.

cube_b3 · Post by **cube_b3** » Tue Jun 01, 2004 1:36 am

I still say the dreamcast marketing and release were ahead of it's time

Rand Linden · Post by **Rand Linden** » Tue Jun 01, 2004 4:01 am

Actually, Sega dropped KMart because they owed Sega millions of dollars for DC sales and weren't paying.

Rand.

Vorrtexx · Post by **Vorrtexx** » Tue Jun 01, 2004 4:14 am

Did Sega take them to court in the end?

Neopunk · Post by **Neopunk** » Tue Jun 01, 2004 5:25 am

I think the DC failed because the lack of good games plus they should've waited until they knew what they were competing against. On top of that, Sega went bankrupt and couldn't support DC any longer.

farrell2k · Post by **farrell2k** » Tue Jun 01, 2004 5:32 am

Ran'd post may look a bit confusing to some. Here's what happened. Kmart ordered about $26Million in DCs. Kmart would pay sega as batches of shipments came in. According to Sega, Kmart only paid for $24 Million and refused to pay the last $2 million shipment. So, just to clear thing up, Kmart wasn't selling them and holding back some paymen
ts to sega.

I never saw anything about a legal outcome, but Kmart is saying that sega didn't ship as many as it was supposed to, and sega said that kmart didn't pay for them. It's likely that kmart was trying to get out of a contract and cut their losses, cuz they just couldn't sell the damn thing, but I don't know.

The Kron · Post by **The Kron** » Tue Jun 01, 2004 5:53 am

Neopunk wrote:I think the DC failed because the lack of good games.

What on earth do you class as a good game then?

Skynet · Post by **Skynet** » Tue Jun 01, 2004 6:15 am

What on earth do you class as a good game then?

megaman8x · Post by **megaman8x** » Tue Jun 01, 2004 9:02 am

I have to go with Ivan on this, the DC was selling great when i tried to get one when they first came out i was on the reserve list for weeks but they did sell as much they needed to to make up for the low price

q_006 · Post by **q_006** » Tue Jun 01, 2004 10:56 am

question.
was there a way to disable CD-Rs (i've heard of MIL-CD but i don't think they are the same things

)?
if yes, then why not make new DCs with that feature completely taken off and
just recall the warez-abled ones?

also i think a major missed selling point was them not having there online services up and running (and i mean fully running) within 2 to 3 months of the launch. for example, Gundam Side Story was supposed to be an online game (it is in Japan) but it got dropped because the online services were not up here yet.

the online play could have saved Sega from bankruptcy and maybe the warez (at least a little)