Are you a fucking troll or what? seriously, I'm asking because you only seem to answer my posts with the most absurd rebuttals ever. I believe you have no idea how economics apply to this market? consoles follow the gillette concept, so you sell at a loss in order to grow a userbase from which you can reap benefits with other products. You need MONEY to sell stuff, and LOTS of money to sell at a loss. In the case of SEGA they were broke and couldnt keep making games to recoup the losses and keep selling consoles at a loss at the same time, get it? and considering the HUGE losses of the first Xbox you cant possibly agree that MS made a smart move NOT buying SEGA instead. And you talk about brand? were you alive back then? when MS was trashed everywhere for Win98 and the antitrust trials? Dont you remember they removed the Microsoft logo from the front to avoid bad publicity? dumbass... Cant you stick with the context? I meant niche in consoles, were FPS were not that popular because of the lack of online. And C&C? Warcraft? Starcraft? Diablo? hello? RTS alone were huge in the mid to late 90s, there were MANY other games besides FPS for PC back in the day. HL and its mods pretty much kickstarted the genre into what it is today, were you have 10 FPS games for every other game on PC. And are you seriously telling me that it was much easier for the common man to install a game on PC (in Win98!) and then configure the system for online, than it was to buy an Xbox and a copy of Halo and just play it? I'm not even counting the fact that back then you needed to add a 3D card for any decent gameplay on a FPS game.
It's hilarious how you try to feign a grand insight into economics but can only come up with such stunning deductions as "You need MONEY to sell stuff". Still think the gaming industry is going to crash? It must be getting close now, huh? The Xbox was the brand, obviously. Yes, I believe that was my point. You wanted to say that was "niche", I'm glad you now agree that's ridiculous, though in future it might help your case if you don't directly contradict yourself. I wish your straw men arguments were a little less obvious, it would make arguing with you much more enjoyable. I said no such thing, as well you know; you claimed that Halo worked on Live, and that this Halo-on-Live thing pre-dated Steam. You were wrong on both counts, and I called you on it - take it like a man instead of trying to wriggle out of it. It just makes you look pathetic.
Sega were screwed by piracy. They sold an OK number of Dreamcasts, but it was far too easy to play CDRs. Without the software sales they had no chance. When the CEO bails the company out with $900 million of his own fortune, you know it is time to cut out anything that is bleeding money. At the time, I remember there were lots of rumours that Microsoft would buy Sega, but then the rumours were that the Japanese would rather go bankrupt than be sold to an American company. I think it ended up being Sega's decision. But who can really tell? Anthaemia: please don't turn this into a Saturn VF3 hijack!
Exactly, in fact the DC was quite popular because at the time of the PS2 launch it was already half the price of the former, and in only months you could buy one for as little as $50, pretty much the same than a new game But making money off a console is not easy nor fast (just ask MS and the first Xbox) and its because of this reason that SEGA couldn't recoup soon enough to keep their consoles business going. MS on the other hand kept burning money like crazy, simply because "lack of funding" doesnt exists at redmond. About piracy, is hard to account what was worst: the actual losses of sales or all the devs leaving the console en masse on the fears of rampant piracy.
Oh come on, the PS1 succeeded in most parts of the world BECAUSE of piracy, my country included. One of the reasons no one wanted an N64 was because "it can't run copied games".
The Dreamcast also suffered the fate of not having support from everyone. One important missing piece was certainly Electronic Arts. Easy piracy certainly helped "kill" it, though. The fact that it also was hard as hell to get in certain regions must've been a bit of a pain too... I've always found this strange. In my area, there was only this one far off shopping center in the middle of nowhere that carried Master System and Mega Drive stuff. Saturn was impossible to find here. I had to cross the border to find Saturn stuff. The Dreamcast was only available, for a short period, in a nearby Toys 'R Us that opened up in the middle of nowhere... While all other game stuff could be found in anything from computer shops, toy stores and record stores to even odd stuff like Magazine Kiosks and local brewers. Also, to this day I wish I could experience this world where no one wants a Nintendo platform or product (Okay... so on a local basis I'm kinda feelin' it if I put myself into the shoes of those who buy into the PS3 marketing.) I live in this strange place that is borderline Nintendo Country. Everytime there's a major Nintendo launch, the lines of people that show up to get things "first" far exceed that of anything seen for any other major launch... It's just weird. If there's a new Zelda game, suddenly even the haters drop everything in their hands and pick up a new console and game(s).
At the time the Dreamcast was OFFICIALLY the fastest selling console of all time. It was even written in the Guinness Book of World Records. It just goes to show that fast selling consoles doesn't mean forever lasting ones. Yakumo
I'm pretty sure that the crazy hype mind share that PS2 had is what killed the DC. That was just nuts. I wasn't really in on it though as I was a N64 guy who wanted Cube. I just got a DC earlier last year tho.
Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't was the Dreamcast outselling the PS2 in the states when Sega of Japan pulled the plug?
There was a DC Set Top Box also slated (prototyped?) but never really made it past the announcement phase.
Which region? In Japan they sold through their initial stock, and didn't have restock for months. This was only a few hundred thousand units I've read. The lack of not having it put me off from buying one for a year, which would've been my re-entrance to games as it were (wasn't playing for a few years prior). The PS2 in Japan, as everyone knows, crushed it some 18 months later by virtually preselling a million units. There were two shops in Akiba (maybe all of Tokyo) that didn't do presales. They had suckers lining up for two days. And the XBox games (while being the best) sold like complete and utter shit! Orta, JSRF, and Shenmue 2 were all financial failures.
No idea since it never said. All they wrote was up until that date it was the fastest selling console. Maybe world wide sales put together ?
Just as Kotaku does w/ all their articles, you can twist things or vaguely word them. If I make a console with 1 unit and sell it in 1 second, it would probably be the fastest selling console to date. You've never made a proper economic statement in this forum though, dude. Alchy's right. With the exception of the Genesis, and the Saturn in Japan to an extent, all of Sega's machines have been pretty much Otaku machines. IE - not "popular". At least not amongst the demographic that matters. All DC titles sold like shit across the board, which is why they didn't get 3rd party support, which is why the fanbase didn't grow, which is why there is no DC2. This was well into the downward spiral though. Well into it. Maybe not quite the nail in the coffin, but piracy is a small piece of the pie. Pretty sure that's what's known as a self-reassuring delusion. That's probably number 5 on the list of the issues w/ that machine.
Whats funny about piracy on the DC is that it became much more widespread after the official cancellation. Before that it was something only a few did, mostly because not everybody had a CD burner, and almost nobody had a broadband connection to download the games. After it went DOA anyone who didnt sold it for a PS2 refused to sunk money on it, so they turned to piracy. That and the fact that many titles were cancelled (HalfLife) and others stayed overseas (Rez). At least thats what I remember from those days... Thats the 9/9/99 launch, the japanese one wasnt a fluke but didnt set any record either. And what am I saying? the problem was simply that SEGA didn't get their money back, which is what happens when you burn money to make a subsidized console and the games wont sell. Not simple enough? then: 1_Sell consoles 2_Sell games 3_ROI ASAP 4_PROFIT They lost money with the addons, they didnt break even with the Saturn, how could they keep the DC going with a negative ROI?
SOJ made money w/ the Saturn any way you look at it. I agree that the DC had too many goofy addons coming out though.
Are you telling me the moderate sucess the Saturn enjoyed in Japan (still a distant #2 to the PSX) compensated for the abysmal failure it was on the US and Europe? ¬_¬ And with addons I meant junk like the 32X.
