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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.
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