What if the Dreamcast never existed?

So I was talking about the decline of SEGA with servicegames, when an idea strikes my head like a flying.......erm..........duck (man I suck at metaphors)

What if the Dreamcast never existed? how would be the games market today?

 

I'm guessing it would have hit a downfall alot more faster. If you think about it dreamcast was the last old style gaming console avalible. On the otherhand the arcades might have survived longer in the

U.S. since their wouldnt be a system avalible that has pretty much exact ports.

 

You mean SEGA?

The first repercussion I can think of is the PS2 being delayed to the extreme, lets say 2001 or more, unless nintendo launch the gamecube even earlier than it did.

On the other hand since there was no DC, I suppose MS didnt get the experience from working with SEGA, and thus they wont release a console, or they did but is not even near as the xbox concept (which is more like a exact copy of the Dreamcast/SegaNet concept).

 

I was refering to the industry itself.

 

Yeah you're right, honestly it went downhill before the DC, I'll say during that mid98-mid99 period when we had the same shit than today's but in the PSX.

When the DC came it was a breeze of fresh air, and now that's gone we know it was the last hurrah....

 

To tell you the truth I don't think gaming would really be any different if the Dreamcast had never existed. The only real distinction it has is being the first system to really bring online gaming to consoles. Even that is diminished though when you take into account that Microsoft was planning the same thing that generation with Xbox Live and had a far better strategy. Online gaming would still be where it is today because of the Xbox. Other than that what did the Dreamcast really bring to the table?

 

Well Obviously it would be the same or even worst, since the actual situation is not that far from that in 1999 when the PSX reigned the market (that is, 90% of the games were CRAP)

About the xbox, I've to disagree on that, since Live is nothing but a straight copy of SegaNet, and MS was already working alongside SEGA way before the xbox project was even in the drawing board.

In fact, if you read the xbox story and the dates it clearly shows that the DC was already out in japan months before some dudes in MS proposed the idea of making a independent console.

 

Well, Microsoft borrow liberally from Dreamcast, or so I'd believe with their console.

 

no Dreamcast... no Shenmue as we know it, No sonic adventure as we know it, No VMU memory cards and no dreamcast devkit to spend money on and post images

 

PS2 was released earlier than originally intended, they moved up the timeframe when Dreamcast was gaining momentum.

 

What's so shit about the actual market situation anyway?
They're great games out there - it's just that you don't get them on one console anymore.

 

No Cel-Shading, either, probably. That would have been a big blow to many of my favourite games of today.

Also, probably, no Xbox.

 

actually the real question should be "why didn't sega and microsoft team up from the begining to make a combined dreamcast/xbox system?"

wouldn't that type of arrangement have been better for the both of them?

 

Because, from my experience anyways, MS rarely partners with anyone, unless they buy them out first. And at the time, MS was busy pushing the CE OS onto anything and anyone they could get to look at it. Gaming was not something new for MS but I don't think they were too hip to the idea of anything other than the PC market without a proven marketshare. Sega proved that when they put out the Dreamcast, with the CE OS. I'm actually surprised they even let Sega liscence it, but with all MS marketing/liscencing moves, it seems to me that the DC was just a beta test for the OS and to let MS see if they could do one better.

Honestly I think that the Xbox would have come around eventually, the PS2 would have been delayed for at least another 6 months minimum, and Nintendo would have dominated the landscape until the PS2 crushed it with its installed user base.

 

CellShading was already used in the psx game 'fear effect'.. However thanks to JSR cell shading was well known.

 

Yeah I know, that's why I think sony would keep the PSX until 2001 and then unveil the PS2, and launch it in 2002.

Even if nintendo releases the GC in 2001 (as they did) it wouldnt matter, since their public image after the N64 was almost the same as SEGA's after the Saturn.

About the Xbox, well maybe MS would go ahead anyways and make it, but I'm sure the lack of experience would show, and the xbox may be more like a PSX clone ratter than what it is today (a Dreamcast clone).

Why MS didnt work with apple? or with netscape? cuz MS dont give a fuck about allies, they just want to buy/crash anyone else in the market.

 

In all honesty even though the xbox was a bit of a failure from a gaming company perspective, for microsoft it gives them the image to say that they are also in that market. It's realy the only reason

they are in the gaming buisness now, since its a highly profatible industry. As for todays generation, sure there are better releases and games finally coming out, but in a whole this was proably one of

the weakest generations of gaming. Alot of anticipated sequals were subpar (sega rally 2006 comes to mind) plus it seemed the focus was elsewhere when concerning gameplay. I mean look at how

namco/bandai and sega/sammy merged, its telling you something went wrong in the industy.

Even sega hasn't really been releasing its best work ever since they stopped doing hardware. But to be honest slowly its picking up and I do got a good feeling that this upcoming next generation is going

to adress alot of these problems. I mean why else are developers excited with revo at all considering that its the weakest of all next gen?

 

Ok, there is a lot of crap out there, but there is also a lot of decent quality software. The ratios might not be great but on the whole I have had a blast this generation, just as I did the previous one. People tend to look back with rose-tinted specs when they think of 16bit. There was plenty of rubbish back then and it cost more.

Identi-kit platformers come to mind.

 

About SEGA, some people say when the DC died the morale was down, a lot of people just went to work in other companies or funded their own studios.

I dont blame them, it must be a bitch to work all day to release high quality content and then see how everybody goes to store for a PS2 and madden.

Now, about the upcoming generation, it just looks like an improveed version of the last, since a lot of developers were complaining that both X360 and PS3 seem to suck in AI and physics. They could add a PPU, like AGEIAs...


The revo allows for easy creativity, since you dont need new types of revolutionary gameplay. Since you have a new type of controller your only job is the adapt your game around that. This red steel game is just time crisis, that all (unless they make it with some kiss-ass body tracking like that konami arcade)

 

I thought I'd chime in here for a moment. You ask what did the Dreamcast really bring to the table, well here's my take.

Dreamcast was the first console to have a built-in 56K modem right out of the box. M$ obviously followed suit and decided to release the Xbox with a built-in ethernet port for broadband gaming.

As mentioned, the DC also brought about one of the first main-stream online services in SegaNet as M$ copied that yet expanded upon it as well.

The DC did of course, have the VMU, which, in my opinion wasn't fully utilized. In the NFL 2K series, you could no longer see or really even have an idea of what play your opponent was picking, unlike even this year's Madden on the 360. The VMU could be taken along with you in your pocket and even play a simple version of Tetris which was really quite fun.

The DC also, used a disc format bigger than CD's, the GD rom, which at the time, was a leap of almost twice the disc space. This kind of paved the way for bigger more massive free 3D roaming games, such as Shenmue etc.

Which leads me to my final point, the games. Some of the games were very unique and some paved the way for games of the future. For instance, after Shenmue, QTE seems to be incorporated into games with more frequency. I think this added a new element to game playing.

The DC had voice capability with its Alien Front Online game. I believe it was the first system to do this. Along with being able to chat in game, another innovation was being able to download new content to expand the replayability of games, ie new levels, characters, bonus features, etc.

It incorporated WinCE into its programming functionality, however, one could argue if this was a good or a bad thing. This did pave the way for many a PC port though too.

So, I don't know. Sega did a lot of firsts with the DC and others seemed to follow suit and expand upon Sega's original idea and improve upon it. That's why I feel Sega brought a lot to the table with the DC, but many factors lead to its untimely demise.