What exactly was EA's reason for not supporting the Dreamcast?

That is correct. The reason the title was canceled was due to the anouncement of the dcs demise. So they decided it would be better to cancel it and use it as a tax write off. However, there are some that say sony payed sierra big dollars for a ps2 exclusive.

 

This is incorrect. A lot of Dreamcasts were sold on this basis. While at uni piracy became a big thing and I doubt that was unique to the place I studied. "This is the new Playstation" was a common comment I heard. Once one person had got hold of a CDR on campus, everyone had it. I didn't support this trend myself as it is against my beliefs, but I saw it happen. Car booters were selling them every weekend too, which was the main source I presume.

 

If that was the case then why was the PSX so well off? CDR discs on that were well more popular than on the Dreamcast. Nah, Sega F*cked it up especially in Europe ! Sponsoring bloody Asnel? What was that all about? many gamers don't even watch football ! That money would have been better spent on quality TV air time. At least in Japan the Dreamcast was part of many shows and even now there's a show that does a run down of a few games each week and they STILL have a Dreamcast system along side the X360, PS2, DS, Wii (God knows how they got that!) and Game Cube. There's still love for the baby over here. Maybe they know of a new release we don't know of?

yakumo

 

I think it was more a personal vendeta than any buisness agreement with sony. I used to work with a guy who was a beta tester for EA's computer division (he beta tested FFVII on PC amoung other games). He told me that the CEO had some huge grudge against sega. All sega websites were blocked. He told me, as indeed others have said as well, that EA didn't treat their "lower level" employees well at all. In retaliation, the testers occasionally wouldn't report non fatal bugs (basically accidental level jumps and shortcuts) so that they would make it into the final version of the games. Additionally, they would use portal websites to access sega sites and download sega wallpapers and screensavers to piss people off.
Anyway, he told me that they were never told why sega was offlimits, just that it seemed like something personal rather than buisness related.

 

In response to Yakumo's comment, I don't understand either why Sega blew a reported £100m on promotion for the Dreamcast when all it did was end up sponsoring a few high profile European football teams - its endorsement at Arsenal was only the tip of a large and quite pointless iceberg, if memory serves me correctly. There were also the projections of Sony-esque subliminal advertisements on landmarks around London, Paris and Berlin, though why I'll never understand as very few people ever got the point of such exercises (and those who did quickly discovered the game being promoted - Worldwide Soccer 2000 - was absolutely terrible in comparison to its 32-bit namesake series).

Let's not forget the online gaming push that backfired when Sega Europe had to answer on television following a report on the Watchdog programme that highlighed its misleading campaign, plus the frankly bizarre launch commercials shown exclusively (well, for a while at least) in UK cinemas that depicted the likes of barbers and stone-throwing children supposedly competing against, and I quote, "up to six billion players." Not in a hundred generations would the Dreamcast have ever been sold to half that many people! Finally, who remembers the film Existenz? Was it really a wise idea on Sega's part to throw money at that project? Is anybody still unsure why the company went down so fast during the Dreamcast period?

Anybody convinced Sega's downfall was due to the Saturn needs to seriously reconsider the evidence presented here and hopefully those of you reading this from your paid positions within the console gaming industry (yes, we know you are out there - maybe anonymously, but still lurking somewhere) can learn a few lessons in how NOT to sell your latest hardware...

 

Is that real? do you have a video of something? cuz I never heard of that, neither that SEGA had money on the movie existenz.

 

Because they are a bunch of prick's.

But god bless them for not supporting DC, that means that there are a lot less shitty games on DC than most other consoles. The only game they make that I like is the Burnout series, but even that is starting to get stale now, with all of the sequels.

 

criterion was making burnout and acclaim was releasing. EA's acuisition of burnout is very recent. Keep faith in them, they ll fuck it up like they did when they acquired NFS. (NFS1 wasn't made by EA, that was from NFS2:SE) - back in the day of Test Drive 4,5 and even 6, NFS had nothing (gameplay-wise) compared to TD (God bless Pitbull Syndicate and Accolade, as well as the nice metal tracks of TD)

 

I will wait for C&C 3: Tiberium Wars to hit the streets before I pass final judgement on EA...

 

Yes, it's very true and sadly I don't have a video or even know where to find one. However, I'm fairly certain that it was former Sega Europe executive Andy Mee who responded in person to complaints about the misleading promotional campaign surrounding the Dreamcast and its early supposed online capabilities.

As for the sponsorship of Existenz, I seem to remember the DVD version of that film including such bonus material as the "Dreamography" video along with the "Buoy" and "Shave" launch commercials (somebody please correct me if I'm wrong, though).

Going back to the subject of the Watchdog incident, I recall it being mentioned somewhere in the official Dreamcast magazine, though since I've long since been parted from my complete set of back issues there is no way I can be sure - at least I still kept my SSM collection, which I know is actually worth something in terms of editorial content and resale value!

 

Yeah, it's true. I remember that as well.

 

Sega said you could play against a billion players? Something like that. And a few people complained to Watchdog, which is an expose type show that attempts to catch out con artists and companies that screw the consumer. Also, Sega signed a deal with British Telecom to provide a "low cost" dial up account (local rate) but because of this you couldn't set up the dreamcast to use your pre-existing ISP (although this was mostly before freephone subscription ISPs came to be).

You could, however, run the USA browser disc via a boot CD and set it up through there.

I remember the fun and games getting PSO connected back in those days. A few pioneer ISPs started freephone and you could connect your DC to them using the method above, but they were always engaged. Often took a couple of hundred tries before you could get connected, and when LD occured much gnashing and lamenting!

 

I bet it was sony fanboy:nod: