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Dreamcast On a Chip
rsw writes "I'm still reeling from Sega's decision to discontinue the greatest console ever made. So when I saw this story about a forthcoming Dreamcast-on-a-chip, my thoughts turned immediately to the possibilities: a portable 2nd-generation backwards-compatible Dreamcast?"
Uh, you may have loved it, but this is often cited as the exact reason the DC failed.
You see, the DC does not allow you to boot with your own code... those ripped games you burned are abusing a backdoor boot trick put in by the DC's designers to test software on a system before it was burned as a copy-protected GD-ROM. People always claim to love the DC, but I think that has more to do with the ease of piracy than it's (admittedly great) library of software or excellent hardware.
It is an interesting idea, but one that failed previously
Since current games consoles can play DVDs, I don't see it taking off.
What I'm surprised we haven't seen is a DVD movie with a PS2 or XBOX game on the disk. Maybe it would need to be a 2-sided disk to get it to play properly.
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
Unfortunately that same code is probably one of the reasons that it died so prematurely
A lie repeated often enough becomes the truth. This is a common sentiment, but untrue.
Sega decided to halt production of Dreamcast at the beginning of 2001 and the cited reason was lack of hardware sales. They didn't get enough of an installed user base to justify continued production.
Software sales were actually brisk for the DC during its lifetime -- which is one of the reasons Sega decided to maximize profits by becoming a software-only company. (Do you think that's a decision a company burned by software piracy would immediately leap to? It would make no sense.)
Finally, DC piracy didn't really kick into gear until after the decision to halt production was made. The Dreamcast didn't really enter mainstream warez-dood awareness until the price dropped to $80 in Fall 2001 as Sega cleared out warehouses full of already-produced units that didn't sell. When it hit $50 in 2002, DC piracy was rampant - but the DC'd been officially deceased for almost 2 years by then.
Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly not defending piracy as being healthy for any IP-oriented industry. But in this specific instance, the system's demise - and subsequent price slashes - is what led to its widespread piracy, rather than the other way around.