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Sega Confirms Death of Dreamcast
Anonymous Coward writes "Sega of America has confirmed a $99 price drop and liquidation of all Dreamcast hardware. Peter Moore went on to say they will develop Virtua Figher 4 for the PS2, along with porting over some of Sega's older titles. He also listed all the new games that will be coming out in the next nine months. " The market is getting thinner
now. We're down to PS/2, and vaporous offerings from Microsoft and
Nintendo.
Actually, there is little truth to this statement. Nintendo is still selling well in IT's market, which is different from the market for PS2 and DC. Nintendo has never killed a machine before the natural end of it's product cycle, and usually supports it well into it's twilight years. (I'm not counting Virtual Boy ... which was a collosal failure.)
When X-Box launches, Gameboy Advance (NOT a rumor, I might add, it's well past confirmed) should launch (June-ish), and Gamecube either at Christmas, or Q1 2002.
Now then, Microsoft has NEVER made a date for a major release, and there's little reason to suspect that X-Box will break the trend. Microsoft themselves have even suggested that Christmas might be more realistic, meaning GBA will beat it to market, and Gamecube should launch at approximately the same time.
Unfortunately, what probably will happen is that Sony will drop the ball this year. Microsoft will release the X-box to a small audience and start out slow. The X-box and PS2 will be in competition for about a year, maybe 18 months, with Microsoft gaining ground as Sony loses ground.
This is mostly correct. Sony's already pissing off third parties by not having enough installed base, and they are eager to see X-Box succeed. The rest of the paragraph is a bit wrong though. X-Box will not be priced lower ... I see it having price parity with PS2. As for PC integration ... that's a pipe dream. MS KNOWS that X-Box needs to be a console, not a PC, and is pushing down that road. Ask any developer ... X-Box is about games, and games only.
Nintendo and Microsoft will likely end up the major players unless Sony pulls it's head out of it's ass, but just like the last "war," Nintendo will probably end up grabbing the younger end of the market, and Microsoft will embrace the older generation.
And in case anyone wonders about my perceptions, I worked in the game industry for a while, and have studied it thoroughly. There is always a cycle to these things, and sometimes the players make them happen while denying that they will fall into the trap.
No, it's a $50 price drop TO $99.
Had me looking all over the web for a $50 Dreamcast, too. :-p
Look at some of the games listed in the article as coming to the PS2 later this year:
Virtua Fighter 4 (Fall)
Space Channel 5 (Later?)
And After April:
Crazy Taxi
18 Wheel American Pro Trucker
Zombie Revenge
Wow! So, around the time of the XBox launch, I'll be able to play Crazy Taxi and Virtua Fighter 4, as well at GT3 and ZOE on the PS2?
The only question is how soon those games might be ported to the XBox (I assume "platform agnostic" means they'll develop almost any game for any system). But if they are on the PS2 first, during the XBox launch, it could really increase support for the PS2.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
A company announces a product line, gets thousands if not millions of people to shell out the cash for it, then abandons the product. It happens all the time. The question is, did Sega imply by selling the DC that they were going to produce an extensive line of games for it? When you bought the DC, were you buying a cool piece of equipment *or* were you buying a player for cool games?
Judge Pag, the Learned, Impartial, and Very Relaxed
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I worked at CompuCentre when the Dreamcast first came out - our in store demo had to be replaced twice because of problems with the Console itself burning out.
We got tonnes of customers around Christmas who wanted the standard items, like, an extra Controller. Sega kept promising delivery, but most of the stuff people were looking didn't show up for 4 months!
Games were released that Sega quickly found didn't actually work in the console (Something to do with the quality of the CD they printed the games on causing problems with the copy-protection scheme in the console).
People who bought the consoles despite these major flaws (And me telling them when the boss was in the back room "Don't buy this thing, it's absolute crap! it really is, seriously, don't.... ever. don't.") - well, these people showed up week after week waiting for the games scheduled for quick release; and they didn't come out on time either. By the time I left compucentre, they had all the controllers, memory packs and lots and lots of games for the Dreamcast - as well as 4 console units that never sold in 4 months because by that time - nobody wanted the damn things.
This particular store could sell 5 - 10 Playstation Consoles in a single day; which is very good for retail in a small Canadian city eh.
Ace
Baloney. If Nintendo had kept hold of their "almost monopoly" they had on the console market back in the SNES days (there were others there, but they weren't much of a threat), we'd still be playing games squeezed on ROM chip carts. As it is, Nintendo tried to get away with that aging technology with the N64, and they got butchered by the PS1. If not for the incredible character lineup (Pokemon, Mario, etc), the N64 might have been the death of Nintendo.
On the contrary, console competition is a good thing, just like it is in practically every other business. Sony kinda fscked up with the PS2 release, by limiting (intentionally or not) the number of units, and not having a good selection of games at release. The result? A bunch of pissed off gamers who can't get a PS2, and another bunch who got them, but are wondering why they bothered for 3-4 decent games.
Think maybe MS and Nintendo will take a cue from that? One can only imagine the marketing opportunities. "XBox: Go ahead and sleep in, we made plenty". "GameCube: Cause one game isn't enough".
I hate to be another "did you read the article" poster, but they are not dropping the Dreamcast platform, they're just stopping their own production of the Dreamcast console and licensing the technology out so someone else can do that part (better/cheaper). The console sales were always the least profitable (sometimes blatantly unprofitable) part of the whole proposition.
There will be more Dreamcast games, more Dreamcast accessories, and, in all likelihood, more Dreamcast (or Dreamcast-compatible) consoles. Look at the other articles on IGN (http://dreamcast.ign.com/news/30862.html, for instance) for more details.
-Puk