Is kind of funny that the boom in the US sales was when everyone already kwen that SEGA was in its way to became a 3rd patie (thus ditching the DC) And i never said that the DC would be a success in japan :smt083
Most of the Dreamcast magazines I've collected over the years are still at my parents' house, but from memory I recall the plans for a port-based hardware expansion unit being mentioned in either the UK official publication or DC-UK, though there was also another long-running series known as Unofficial Dreamcast Magazine (or something to that effect) that I sometimes bought as well, so the article could have been from one of many places. Either way, there was definitely an article suggesting that Sega had been considering a Dreamcast upgrade. However, this was certainly not connected to a conversion of VF4. In fact, I'm fairly sure that Yu Suzuki even gave a brief press statement in which he said that such a project would only be given the go ahead if preliminary research concluded that any Dreamcast version would not be too badly compromised. Once again, I can't provide an exact source, but when you consider that this announcement was made sometime in 2001 then it's safe to presume that performance limitations AND the Dreamcast's imminent death forced VF4 onto the PS2.
Most "official" magazines tend to do a lot of hype to keep the buyers mind clear of any future problems and doubts about their buy. And if was "somewhere" in 2001 it has to be before march, when SEGA told the world the DC was over :death
I'm not sure when the hardware upgrade story first began to circulate, though news of Yu Suzuki's plans for a Dreamcast conversion of VF4 came from the same time when Shenmue II appeared in the form of a video trailer - wasn't the GameJam show in early 2001?
Dreamcast was the best of all the current gen console's as Sega had a clear plan and vision for the machine from the outset and stuck to it relgously, it was a success in my eye's and will never be seen as anything else to me now, people have a deep affection for the machine after all this time and the reason why is that it was fantastic, there is nothing else I can say about the machine. Two thing's the machine could have benefitted from though was the BBA made widely available early and promoted heavily in countries that had BB access, and some sort of mass storage to accomodate new level's and download's and all the advantage's that come with mass storage, I still kinda loved the zip drive idea that Sega had, it would have really made the console a better experience online. I still wish that they supported the dremacast and released the BBa and zip drive again for all of us fans and then set up some sort of Dreamcast live so that we could compete online with our DC's and download new level's for game's.Perhap's they may return to the Hardware business if Sony lose some of the massive marketshare that they have at the moment and there is a gap in the market that Sega can somehow penetrate, the company is certainly looking healthier by the month and stranger things have happened.
I think NintyMad has said it correctly. The dreamcast was, indeed, the best machine this generation. Too bad about marketing, though. It was marketing against a hyped ghost-console (PS2), and then Microsoft's financial power that eventually killed the DC. It was nothing related to quality or actual gaming. Pure business. Sad.
