DC VS PS2

Hawq · Post by **Hawq** » Sun Sep 11, 2005 9:24 am

Skynet wrote:Bit offtopic, but how much did piracy affect the C64? Hell, I remember owning heaps of tapes with warezed games on them. And to me it seemed like a lot less people cared about piracy back then, what with cracking groups giving names and addresses in their intros and what not.

Ah the days when all you needed was a tape to tape record function on a stereo & C90's were like money in school playgrounds all over the country, come to think of it good riddence to those days as thered be no market now if it went on like that

MetaFox · Post by **MetaFox** » Sun Sep 11, 2005 10:28 am

Quotable Quzar wrote:Piracy couldn't possibly kill it alone, because with piracy increased, in theory hardware sales would increase greatly because of the one-time investment aspect. Think about it: would you be more willing to pay 100$ for a machine with hundreds of games availible for free or a 50$ machine where every game costs over 20$?

Yea, they make more from software sales as a general priciple, but it's not a complete standstill situation.

At the point of the piracy, when the systems were $149.99, Sega was losing money for each console sold. When the systems reached $99.99, Sega was only making back about half of their console costs for each system sold.

Post by **Quzar** » Sun Sep 11, 2005 12:45 pm

when they made the decision to stop producing the DCs it was because they were not selling at 50$, not because they weren't making money off of it. There were warehouses full of DCs that were backed up. They didn't stop making them because of piracy. The reason it was discontinued was because after that stop of production when they had a surplus word got out that they had stopped making them and it had a domino effect.

Caboose · Post by **Caboose** » Sun Sep 11, 2005 1:43 pm

Quotable Quzar wrote:when they made the decision to stop producing the DCs it was because they were not selling at 50$, not because they weren't making money off of it. There were warehouses full of DCs that were backed up. They didn't stop making them because of piracy. The reason it was discontinued was because after that stop of production when they had a surplus word got out that they had stopped making them and it had a domino effect.

I went when they were $75 (maybe they had just annouced its cancellation?) and they were sold out everywhere.

MetaFox · Post by **MetaFox** » Sun Sep 11, 2005 1:45 pm

Quotable Quzar wrote:when they made the decision to stop producing the DCs it was because they were not selling at 50$, not because they weren't making money off of it. There were warehouses full of DCs that were backed up. They didn't stop making them because of piracy. The reason it was discontinued was because after that stop of production when they had a surplus word got out that they had stopped making them and it had a domino effect.

They stopped production of Dreamcasts long before they were reduced in price to $49.99. As I stated before, Sega was losing almost half of their production costs on Dreamcast consoles at $99.99. The only reason that Sega reduced their consoles to $49.99 was so that they could move the remaining consoles off the shelves, as Sega was already losing money for each console sold - so they figured they'd just try to make back some money for each console before they were forced to buy them back from the retailers.

Cid Highwind · Post by **Cid Highwind** » Sun Sep 11, 2005 1:56 pm

GyroVorbis wrote:
Juan wrote:
evanft wrote:And f355 is blown away by GT3 graphics-wise. The car models are better, the textures are better, the environments are better, and the lighting effects are better in GT3.
And F355 has an extra outside camera on PS2.
And Resident Evil Code Veronica looks blurry/faded, has additional load screens, and assy vibration support compared to DC.

If we're going to compare:
Evil Twin: The DC version has got better textures, and better framerate.

Rayman 2: The DC version looks even better than the PC version. It's silky smooth with great textures. The PS2 version has got ugly textures, water isn't even transparent, and the framerate is below 30. I read a game magazine from back in those days and it said the PS2 version was a polished version of the DC version. How wrong people were....

DOA2: The PS2 version has got better framerate and some 'cool' effects during the final fight, but personally I don't even like those effects, and I prefer the looks of the DC version, but I might be biased there.

Basicly out of every game that has been released on both consoles, the DC version was superior.

Juan · Post by **Juan** » Sun Sep 11, 2005 3:21 pm

The games I prefer are MVC2, CVS2 and SFIII 3rd Strike (none of the 3rd Strike home versions match the Arcade). Everything else, gimme the PS2 version. I love my DC, but I really think PS2 look better, besides that blurriness some titles have.
Not like they are the same version, but DC Soul Calibur > PS2 Soul Calibur 2.

Lartrak · Post by **Lartrak** » Sun Sep 11, 2005 5:31 pm

I think anyone who blames the death of the DC on a single primary cause is ignoring a lot of contributing factors.

Nick · Post by **Nick** » Sun Sep 11, 2005 5:35 pm

In the US, 250 games weren't even released by the end of the DC's life span. Only 248 were.

More people wanted a PS2 than a Dreamcast; it killed the Dreamcast w/ the hype. Why do I say that? Barely anyone knew what a Dreamcast was in 5th/6th grade -- everyone was just talking about the PS2. The Dreamcast was completely ignored.

MetaFox · Post by **MetaFox** » Sun Sep 11, 2005 5:37 pm

Lartrak wrote:I think anyone who blames the death of the DC on a single primary cause is ignoring a lot of contributing factors.

The Dreamcast died when it did because of piracy. Nothing else contributed to it dying in January, 2001. If the Dreamcast wasn't pirated, it wouldn't have been cancelled as soon as it was.

But, this has been discussed to death, and nothing new is being said...

So, that'll be my final post in this topic unless the topic changes away from discussion of the Dreamcast's death.

If you want to see what I said about this before (and most of it is repeats of what I said here), check this post:

http://www.dcemulation.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=66690

It also has some interesting posts from people who were connected to the dealings within Sega itself at the time of the Dreamcast's death.

az_bont · Post by **az_bont** » Sun Sep 11, 2005 5:49 pm

MetaFox wrote:That's fact, and is backed up by conversations with Sega employees.

Of course they're going to say that!

Did you really expect Sega to admit that the reason the Dreamcast failed when it did was because of a massive combination of cock-ups on their part?

MetaFox · Post by **MetaFox** » Sun Sep 11, 2005 6:08 pm

az_bont wrote:Of course they're going to say that!

Did you really expect Sega to admit that the reason the Dreamcast failed when it did was because of a massive combination of cock-ups on their part?

OK, I lied. One last post.

No one denies that Sega messed up by making the Mil-CD format in the first place. Though, any other mistake that Sega made had absolutely nothing to do with the ultimate decision to cancel the Dreamcast unexpectedly in January.

There were three factors for the cancellation in January, and all of them were related to the rampant Dreamcast piracy: Sega making the Mil-CD format, Utopia, Echelon, and Kallisto releasing warez releases the same day (or sometimes before) a game is released commercially, and all major developers and publishers other than Sega themselves and Capcom dropping support of the Dreamcast (other than games already scheduled to be released) the same year that the Dreamcast was cracked.

The Dreamcast may have been cancelled by now if it wasn't cracked due to poor sales, but it would not have been cancelled in January 2001 if it weren't for Dreamcast piracy.

abydos1000 · Post by **abydos1000** » Sun Sep 11, 2005 6:27 pm

I'm assuming then the lockout on being able to read CDRs should have been done sooner (or from the outset) rather than later. Maybe that would have helped some. Would we be playing a new Sega console had they done it right from the start? Don't know, but I think the other factors that lead to the DC's death would have ended in the same result, but it may have taken a bit longer to get there.

Too bad the DVD format was still too expensive during the design of the DC. I suspect one reason why people waited for the PS2 was the ability to be able to play DVDs out of the box. Heck, the first gen of games was so bad, I hear it was one of the reasons why it sold so well in Japan in it's first year. It was a good way to get a basic DVD player and have something that still plays all of your PSone games. Imagine now if the DC had used the DVD format and had some form of lock out ...

Nick · Post by **Nick** » Sun Sep 11, 2005 8:10 pm

I definately agree with Meta that the reason it died so fast was due to piracy, but I definately think Sega would have bowed out around 2003 - 2004 as it was, since they were bleeding money.

Juan · Post by **Juan** » Mon Sep 12, 2005 1:04 am

Has anyone said the controller could be a reason? I think it's a step backward from the Saturn pad and I just don't get why it has only 4 buttons and 2 triggers, and no second analogue stick.

Eckostyle · Post by **Eckostyle** » Mon Sep 12, 2005 10:35 am

Juan wrote:(none of the 3rd Strike home versions match the Arcade)

The PS2 and XBOX versions are, as of now, considered arcade perfect, the 3S commnity has yet to find any dissimilarities between the port and original. We've been waiting for this since the cruddy DC release(the input lag was inexcusable).

GyroVorbis · Post by **GyroVorbis** » Mon Sep 12, 2005 10:50 am

Juan wrote:Has anyone said the controller could be a reason? I think it's a step backward from the Saturn pad and I just don't get why it has only 4 buttons and 2 triggers, and no second analogue stick.

I like the DC controllers.

The Dreamcast actually has a lot more buttons than you may think. It does have a second analog, but no controller uses it. Second analogs weren't very popular at the time of the DCs release.

I'm sure if the DC hadn't been discontinued so soon, we'd have seen a whole new model controller with a second analog and other buttons, because it's perfectly possible.

-Johnick- · Post by **-Johnick-** » Sun Nov 06, 2005 12:50 pm

If one full motion video demo of Metal Gear Solid 2 has convinced you that the PS2 is the better machine, then you haven't opened your eyes to the reality before you

And when MGS2 came out and the assclown who wrote this saw it was real in game footage and not FMV, it killed his article, going down faster then a blonde on prom night.

MetaFox · Post by **MetaFox** » Sun Nov 06, 2005 1:46 pm

-Johnick- wrote:
If one full motion video demo of Metal Gear Solid 2 has convinced you that the PS2 is the better machine, then you haven't opened your eyes to the reality before you
And when MGS2 came out and the assclown who wrote this saw it was real in game footage and not FMV, it killed his article, going down faster then a blonde on prom night.

The teaser trailer of Metal Gear Solid 2 shown at E3, that the article is referring to, was not powered by the Playstation 2 in real time. It was all pre-rendered video.

Most of the footage that was in the trailer did make it into the game - so it was "real in game footage", as you so eloquently put it - however it was mostly pre-rendered cutscenes.