The Real Reason why EA did not support the Dreamcast

Taken from a Recent IGN article on Sega:
http://retro.ign.com/articles/974/974695p9.html

To this day, many credit Electronic Arts' lack of support as the Dreamcast's undoing, and much mystery and speculation has surrounded the falling out. Stolar has been kind enough to illuminate the situation, once and for all:


"[Former Electronic Arts CEO] Larry Probst is a dear friend of mine. Larry came to me and said, 'Bernie, we'll do Dreamcast games, but we want sports exclusivity.' I said, 'You want to be on the system with no other third-party sports games?'

"I looked at him and said, 'You know what? I'll do it, but there's one caveat here: I just bought a company called Visual Concepts for $10 million, so you'll have to compete with them.' Larry says, 'No, you can't even put them on the system.' I said 'Then Larry, you and I are not going to be partners on this system.'" -- Bernie Stolar


Despite later smack talk from EA against SEGA and the Dreamcast, Stolar always respected tough negotiation. "I have to applaud EA for asking for that," he admits, before fondly recalling another audacious EA negotiation. The deal fell through, but SEGA was confident that Visual Concepts could outdo even the great Madden franchise, and according to some critics, they were right.



Never knew or heard that before!?!?! h:

 

Not too sure I could agree with Stolar's view there. I personally have no doubt that the 2K series of games based on U.S. sports were better than EA offerings at the time, but the system really did suffer in Europe due to the lack of a FIFA title. It didn't help that Visual Concepts' Sega Worldwide Soccer games were terrible, either.

 

I have heard this story before and frankly, I don't think the Dreamcast could have survived even with EA. While having their sports titles could have been helpful, it wasn't enough to save the Saturn and EA certainly didn't push the 3do to victory here in the United States. EA is an important company to have on board, but unless they would have given the Dreamcast exclusivity (which there is no way they would have), it really makes no difference in the end.

 

Stolar should have demanded that they would only develop sports titles for the DC and no other machine. That would have been a sweet deal. :110:

 

But there's no way EA would have ever done that, regardless of how "demanding" Stolar was, especially over the impending PS2 or even just the PSX. Unless, of course, Sega paid them a ridiculous amount of money which, of couse, they couldn't.

 

Visual Concepts had nothing to do with these games - you're probably thinking of Silicon Dreams, who took over from Sega's own CS Team Ara when that group folded just before the Dreamcast launch.

In my opinion, the final word from Stolar on the EA chapter is further pure crap from the "king of spin!" Who could possibly trust a Sony fanboy that effectively killed any chance of Saturn owners getting new RPGs in the US after making his personal issues with the president of Working Designs public?

 

Yeah, sorry. Either way, they were abysmal:nod:

 

EA didn't support the Dreamcast because they were pissed off they got burned with their crappy Saturn games.

 

Didn't EA port Batltle Garegga? I wouldn't call that game crappy. Right, its not theirs, but it still has their name on it. I wouldn't call Need for Speed a crap game either. Its well done on the Saturn.

 

Stolar..Stolar...Stolar.....

 

No, EA just published it in Japan. They have nothing at all to do with the actual game programming. The game was by Razzing / 8ing who are or were a very good shoot'em up maker.

Yakumo

 

So surprised I actually like a few EA games now (non PC).

 

ea support or not - people were too stupid... not supporting one of the best systems in gaming history.

 

You could also say the same thing about the Saturn. Especially when it was launched - the first games were a million times better than PSX launch titles. And the DC already had a great library of games at the time of the PS2 launch, while PS2 owners had to settle with crap like Fantavision and The Bouncer for like a year after the launch.

 

What a load of old BS. Ridge Racer and Wipeout owned anything on the Saturn for a long time.

 

Daytona USA, even the first Saturn version with the pretty bad popup, is way better than RR.

RR is still a good game, but nowhere near as good as Daytona USA.

 

The Dreamcast was an unfortunate victim of circumstance: there was no way it could have ever survived the onslaught of the PlayStation 2. I don't believe Sega could have done anything to change the opinion of the gaming masses and convince them to buy a DC. The world wanted the PS2 and that was that.

However, for those of us that did believe in Sega one last time, the DC has provided 10 years of awesome gaming. I have really fond memories of the DC; it's the best machine I've ever owned.

 

"

This.
Just this.
People loved the PS1. They knew the PS2 was on the way. They expected it to be better than the PS1. The expectations and hype were immense! "Sony Playstation 2. You don't mess with it."
As soon as Sony stepped on board that next generation, it called the shots and the rest is history.

 

Ridge Racer and Wipeout were not launch games. The PlayStation launch games were that utter shite Cosmic race which doesn't even seem to have any objective and that turn FPS Time Crackers. Saturn's Virtua Fighter as crap as it was as far as ports go blew both out of the water. It was the promotion shots and videos of Ridge racer that kept people away from Saturn. Even though daytona is the better game Ridge racer looked far better in motion plyus was released much sooner than Daytona. All the Saturn had to battle against Ridge racer (which is a fantastic game) was the piss poor Gale Racer.

I've said it a million times, if Sony didn't have namco and Psygnosis (for the non japanese market) at the start they probably would have fell flat on their arse since it was only them two companies bringing the systems biggest hits.

Yakumo

 

By the time the PSX came out in Europe, there had been enough time for some decent games ( Ridge Racer was SCES 00001 & Wipeout was SCES 00010 ).

The Saturn just wasn't as good as the PSX. Titles do play a part in that, but the PSX was more powerful & easier to write for. Buying Psygnosis & getting Namco on board by promising easy arcade ports was genius.