I was intending to write an article to "prove my worth" involving research into why the Dreamcast died only two short years after it's release on 9/9/99. Unfortunately for me, the article began to fall apart when I failed to find sources I could have sworn I read at some point, and a lot of what I did find turned out to be contradictory or later proven false. Still, I figured I'd post the botched article anyway to start discussion, seeing as I know I'm not the only guy who hoped the Dreamcast was going to be as big and successful as the Genesis.
As we approach the tenth anniversiary of the Sega Dreamcast, a lot of old Sega fans have to find themselves asking why Sega went from the #2 console manufacturer in the world to a low-ranking software company churning out games for their former rivals. On 9/9/99, the future looked so bright for Sega and it's new baby. What went wrong?
1. Failure to find a market.
Those who were gamers in the late 90s will remember that they were rather lean years. The Nintendo 64 was certainly a great system, but it was showing it's age by 1999, and was heavily geared towards children. While there were certainly adult games on the N64 like Conker's Bad Fur Day or 007: Goldeneye, most people still thought Mario 64 or Super Smash Bros. when the Nintendo 64 was mentioned. The Sony Playstation was strong, but heavily biased towards racing and sports games, and thus the casual market. Most of the gamers who grew up with an NES, SNES or Genesis were forced to make do with kid's games or shift to the PC, where games like Starcraft made it seem like the PC would become the predominant gaming medium.
Sega seemed to know this. Their flagship launch title, Sonic Adventure, appealed to both young gamers and teenaged ones who'd shifted to Playstations and PCs. It showed off the processing power of the Dreamcast and made it clear that the Dreamcast could, at least with careful tweaking, produce a 3D environment every bit as crisp and engaging as a midrange PC. The Dreamcast was advertised as the system that would bring the cool back to gaming, using bright colors, lots of action, and graphics which, for the time, were very impressive.
So what happened? The thing is, Sega seemed unsure who they wanted to sell the Dreamcast to. Release games like Sonic Adventure or AeroWings made it clear that they were trying to grasp multiple audiences at once, instead of focusing on those who Nintendo and Sony were not. The N64, along with Pokemon on the gameboy, ensured that the kiddie market was out for the Dreamcast. But Sega couldn't divorce itself from it's child-friendly past, making it hard to advertise to players who'd grown up with a Genesis or Master System. While teen-targeting games like Jet Grind Radio and Phantasy Star Online eventually hit the Dreamcast, they were too little, too late.
2. Badvertizing
The biggest failure in regards to not finding a market for the Dreamcast is the fact that the Dreamcast and it's games were poorly marketed. While Sega certainly pulled off a lot of crazy stunts to promote the system, they did very little TV, radio and magazine advertisement, thus missing out on a big chunk of the potential market. The teen-centric, Japanese-culture-centric Dreamcast should have been in ads running on the then-new Toonami non-stop, but it didn't happen. Those Dreamcast ads that were produced were decidely creepy, strange, and failed to actually show off much of the power and advantages of the system. It's a mistake that Sony would repeat when they launched their PS3, but Sony has the money to recover from such folly.
The Dreamcast also had a laughably bad magazine during a period where game magazines were the only real way to find out about videogames. While gaming magazines are now collapsing left and right due to the internet, in 1999, most people didn't have the internet, and in any event Official Dreamcast Magazine had demos for most of the big upcoming releases. But that's all it had. The articles were laughably unprofessional and generally revolved more around the crazy antics at the office than the games the magazine was ostensibly supposed to be reviewing. Without anyone to promote the console-selling games on the system, the Dreamcast was largely ignored by gamers who simply did not know there was anything on it worth playing.
And that points out another problem, Sega failed to properly advertise the games themselves. While there were a few advertisements produced for Jet Set Radio and Phantasy Star Online, Sega focused mostly on promoting the system itself. While that certainly might have worked back in the "Bit Wars" of the early 90s, by 1999, most players were more interested in the games on the system rather than the system itself. The shovelware which now makes up the fodder used by the Angry Videogame Nerd and his imitators had taught gamers that a system was only as good as the games which came out on it. Their rejection of the Atari Jaguar (among other consoles) made this clear.
3. Pointless Peripherals and Unfulfilled Promises
The Dreamcast promised to be a revolutionary new system which would change the world of gaming forever. It anticipated online gaming (now a staple of the console world) as well as the use of downloadable content for games. Plans to make the Dreamcast play DVDs and turn the memory card into an MP3 player were never realized though, and the biggest online games of the system didn't come out until late in the system's short life.
The problem is that Sega promised more than they could deliver. The technology simply wasn't readily available yet. The Dreamcast would never play DVDs and the VMU that could play MP3s ended up being vaporware. Online gaming is impractical on dialup, and without a keyboard or microphone it was difficult to play games or post on messageboards. Though such peripherals were available, they were expensive and often packaged with other games, necessitating unwanted purchases. In the end, the Dreamcast promised much but delivered little.
4. Games? What games?
According to Wikipedia, there are 325 games officially released for the Dreamcast, and 100 of them were only available in Japan. While certainly some of them were designed to cater to Japanese culture or would be difficult to tranlslate and localize, cutting off Americans and Europeans to 1/3rd of the console's total highlight's the Dreamcast's key problem: it had few exclusive, console-selling games worth owning, and those it did have came out late. Sonic Adventure was the only big draw-game to come along with the release date, and it was designed more to show what the Dreamcast was capable of than anything else. Games like Shenmue and Phantasy Star: Online were promised, but came out too late to save the console.
So why weren't there more good games? The Dreamcast is famously easy to write software for thanks to it's Windows CE-based internal software. With very low development costs, many smaller development companies leapt on the Dreamcast as a cheap way to get a game to market. This invariably led to an avalanche of shovelware, which drowned the Dreamcast and ruined a lot of it's reputation. If the Dreamcast had sold well it would have probably been able to fight through the crappy games (the Wii certainly has) but as it only moved a few million units, it had a phenomenally shallow library limited to games like Soul Calibur, Power Stone and Hydro Thunder.
The imminent approach of the Playstation 2 also hurt the Dreamcast library, since many developers saw no reason to take a rist on the Dreamcast when they could simply wait another year or two in order to produce a game for the more powerful and better-branded PS2. At the time, the Sony brand was nearly sacred in Japan, and the PSOne had solidified itself in the US, ensuring that the PS2 would be a guaranteed hit. Why take a risk when you can just wait?
5. The PS2
There is no doubt that the Sony Playstation 2 was a major contributing factor to the Dreamcast's demise. The PS2 was announced in 1999, the same year the Dreamcast hit the market, and Sony immediately set about ensuring it's new console would be the predominant machine. The console was aggressively marketed and pushed into production well before the infrastructure to support it was in place (leading to extreme shortages in 2000) to ensure that it killed the Dreamcast and put Nintendo's as-of-yet unreleased Gamecube on shaky standing.
There's also no denying that the PS2 is, in many respects, a better console. While the first models were plagued with mechanical problems, these were quickly ironed out. Sony's exclusive contracts with many companies ensured that the PS2 would have a great library in short order, thus hitting Sega where it was weakest. Sony's artificial shortage in the early months also helped drive up demand for the console, ensuring no one would bother investing in a Dreamcast.
6. Piracy
While something of a wildcard, there's no denying that the Dreamcast was easy to pirate games for and piracy was rampant. Dreamcast discs had absolutely no protective mechanisms whatsoever, meaning potential pirates needed only to use software built in to most Windows machines in order to make illicit discs. While it's impossible to say how much damage piracy did to the Dreamcast, it's also impossible to say it didn't have an effect. With pirated games easily available from a large number of illicit retailers cut heavily into the profits from many of the games.
The failure of the Dreamcast is multi-faceted, and while there's no denying that the PS2 definitely crushed the Dreamcast, Sega's failure to find a market for it and lock it down in the USA (where Sony had less market dominance) and provide a solid library for the console. While Sega no doubt would not have been able to rise to the #1 position in the console wars due to limited adoption and stiff competition from Sony (and later Microsoft), we have to wonder, would there have been room in the world for a fourth console? Could Sega, through clever marketing and cheap development kits, turned the Dreamcast into an outlet for casual, quirky games and definitive home ports from the Arcade? The fact that arcade ports continued to appear on the Dreamcast as late as 2007 indicates that such might have been the case.
As we approach the tenth anniversiary of the Sega Dreamcast, a lot of old Sega fans have to find themselves asking why Sega went from the #2 console manufacturer in the world to a low-ranking software company churning out games for their former rivals. On 9/9/99, the future looked so bright for Sega and it's new baby. What went wrong?
1. Failure to find a market.
Those who were gamers in the late 90s will remember that they were rather lean years. The Nintendo 64 was certainly a great system, but it was showing it's age by 1999, and was heavily geared towards children. While there were certainly adult games on the N64 like Conker's Bad Fur Day or 007: Goldeneye, most people still thought Mario 64 or Super Smash Bros. when the Nintendo 64 was mentioned. The Sony Playstation was strong, but heavily biased towards racing and sports games, and thus the casual market. Most of the gamers who grew up with an NES, SNES or Genesis were forced to make do with kid's games or shift to the PC, where games like Starcraft made it seem like the PC would become the predominant gaming medium.
Sega seemed to know this. Their flagship launch title, Sonic Adventure, appealed to both young gamers and teenaged ones who'd shifted to Playstations and PCs. It showed off the processing power of the Dreamcast and made it clear that the Dreamcast could, at least with careful tweaking, produce a 3D environment every bit as crisp and engaging as a midrange PC. The Dreamcast was advertised as the system that would bring the cool back to gaming, using bright colors, lots of action, and graphics which, for the time, were very impressive.
So what happened? The thing is, Sega seemed unsure who they wanted to sell the Dreamcast to. Release games like Sonic Adventure or AeroWings made it clear that they were trying to grasp multiple audiences at once, instead of focusing on those who Nintendo and Sony were not. The N64, along with Pokemon on the gameboy, ensured that the kiddie market was out for the Dreamcast. But Sega couldn't divorce itself from it's child-friendly past, making it hard to advertise to players who'd grown up with a Genesis or Master System. While teen-targeting games like Jet Grind Radio and Phantasy Star Online eventually hit the Dreamcast, they were too little, too late.
2. Badvertizing
The biggest failure in regards to not finding a market for the Dreamcast is the fact that the Dreamcast and it's games were poorly marketed. While Sega certainly pulled off a lot of crazy stunts to promote the system, they did very little TV, radio and magazine advertisement, thus missing out on a big chunk of the potential market. The teen-centric, Japanese-culture-centric Dreamcast should have been in ads running on the then-new Toonami non-stop, but it didn't happen. Those Dreamcast ads that were produced were decidely creepy, strange, and failed to actually show off much of the power and advantages of the system. It's a mistake that Sony would repeat when they launched their PS3, but Sony has the money to recover from such folly.
The Dreamcast also had a laughably bad magazine during a period where game magazines were the only real way to find out about videogames. While gaming magazines are now collapsing left and right due to the internet, in 1999, most people didn't have the internet, and in any event Official Dreamcast Magazine had demos for most of the big upcoming releases. But that's all it had. The articles were laughably unprofessional and generally revolved more around the crazy antics at the office than the games the magazine was ostensibly supposed to be reviewing. Without anyone to promote the console-selling games on the system, the Dreamcast was largely ignored by gamers who simply did not know there was anything on it worth playing.
And that points out another problem, Sega failed to properly advertise the games themselves. While there were a few advertisements produced for Jet Set Radio and Phantasy Star Online, Sega focused mostly on promoting the system itself. While that certainly might have worked back in the "Bit Wars" of the early 90s, by 1999, most players were more interested in the games on the system rather than the system itself. The shovelware which now makes up the fodder used by the Angry Videogame Nerd and his imitators had taught gamers that a system was only as good as the games which came out on it. Their rejection of the Atari Jaguar (among other consoles) made this clear.
3. Pointless Peripherals and Unfulfilled Promises
The Dreamcast promised to be a revolutionary new system which would change the world of gaming forever. It anticipated online gaming (now a staple of the console world) as well as the use of downloadable content for games. Plans to make the Dreamcast play DVDs and turn the memory card into an MP3 player were never realized though, and the biggest online games of the system didn't come out until late in the system's short life.
The problem is that Sega promised more than they could deliver. The technology simply wasn't readily available yet. The Dreamcast would never play DVDs and the VMU that could play MP3s ended up being vaporware. Online gaming is impractical on dialup, and without a keyboard or microphone it was difficult to play games or post on messageboards. Though such peripherals were available, they were expensive and often packaged with other games, necessitating unwanted purchases. In the end, the Dreamcast promised much but delivered little.
4. Games? What games?
According to Wikipedia, there are 325 games officially released for the Dreamcast, and 100 of them were only available in Japan. While certainly some of them were designed to cater to Japanese culture or would be difficult to tranlslate and localize, cutting off Americans and Europeans to 1/3rd of the console's total highlight's the Dreamcast's key problem: it had few exclusive, console-selling games worth owning, and those it did have came out late. Sonic Adventure was the only big draw-game to come along with the release date, and it was designed more to show what the Dreamcast was capable of than anything else. Games like Shenmue and Phantasy Star: Online were promised, but came out too late to save the console.
So why weren't there more good games? The Dreamcast is famously easy to write software for thanks to it's Windows CE-based internal software. With very low development costs, many smaller development companies leapt on the Dreamcast as a cheap way to get a game to market. This invariably led to an avalanche of shovelware, which drowned the Dreamcast and ruined a lot of it's reputation. If the Dreamcast had sold well it would have probably been able to fight through the crappy games (the Wii certainly has) but as it only moved a few million units, it had a phenomenally shallow library limited to games like Soul Calibur, Power Stone and Hydro Thunder.
The imminent approach of the Playstation 2 also hurt the Dreamcast library, since many developers saw no reason to take a rist on the Dreamcast when they could simply wait another year or two in order to produce a game for the more powerful and better-branded PS2. At the time, the Sony brand was nearly sacred in Japan, and the PSOne had solidified itself in the US, ensuring that the PS2 would be a guaranteed hit. Why take a risk when you can just wait?
5. The PS2
There is no doubt that the Sony Playstation 2 was a major contributing factor to the Dreamcast's demise. The PS2 was announced in 1999, the same year the Dreamcast hit the market, and Sony immediately set about ensuring it's new console would be the predominant machine. The console was aggressively marketed and pushed into production well before the infrastructure to support it was in place (leading to extreme shortages in 2000) to ensure that it killed the Dreamcast and put Nintendo's as-of-yet unreleased Gamecube on shaky standing.
There's also no denying that the PS2 is, in many respects, a better console. While the first models were plagued with mechanical problems, these were quickly ironed out. Sony's exclusive contracts with many companies ensured that the PS2 would have a great library in short order, thus hitting Sega where it was weakest. Sony's artificial shortage in the early months also helped drive up demand for the console, ensuring no one would bother investing in a Dreamcast.
6. Piracy
While something of a wildcard, there's no denying that the Dreamcast was easy to pirate games for and piracy was rampant. Dreamcast discs had absolutely no protective mechanisms whatsoever, meaning potential pirates needed only to use software built in to most Windows machines in order to make illicit discs. While it's impossible to say how much damage piracy did to the Dreamcast, it's also impossible to say it didn't have an effect. With pirated games easily available from a large number of illicit retailers cut heavily into the profits from many of the games.
The failure of the Dreamcast is multi-faceted, and while there's no denying that the PS2 definitely crushed the Dreamcast, Sega's failure to find a market for it and lock it down in the USA (where Sony had less market dominance) and provide a solid library for the console. While Sega no doubt would not have been able to rise to the #1 position in the console wars due to limited adoption and stiff competition from Sony (and later Microsoft), we have to wonder, would there have been room in the world for a fourth console? Could Sega, through clever marketing and cheap development kits, turned the Dreamcast into an outlet for casual, quirky games and definitive home ports from the Arcade? The fact that arcade ports continued to appear on the Dreamcast as late as 2007 indicates that such might have been the case.
