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Former Sega Prez Discusses the Dreamcast's Failure

Posted by Soulskill on from the who-would-want-to-play-online-anyway dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Former Sega of America president Bernie Stolar speaks out about the man who ousted him, EA's attempt to monopolize sports games on the Dreamcast, why the Dreamcast failed, and a legendary prank he pulled against Sony. 'I fought to have a modem on the platform. Maybe it was early — who knows. But I fought for a modem in the beginning because I wanted to have massively multiplayer online games on that system.' When asked about the console's online capabilities not catching on with consumers, he said, 'It doesn't surprise me, because there wasn't software tied into it. They were not building and going after software to start that. I mean, I was looking for developers and content providers to start doing that. Sega did not do that after I left. They just abandoned it.'"

2 of 86 comments (clear)

  1. Re:sounds like some rationalization going on by Stormwatch · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You mean um, 'crazy taxi' (good for a little while, but wears thin) and um, Mavel v. Capcon 2? and um, well I"m sure if you owned the system you could think of more, but those are the only ones I ever saw that looked worth playing.

    You can't be serious. The Dreamcast had tons of great games. Among its US launch titles are Power Stone, Sonic Adventure, Soulcalibur, and Tokyo Xtreme Racer.

    And soon came Rayman 2, Sonic Adventure 2, Phantasy Star Online, Toy Commander, StarLancer, Metropolis Street Racer, Shenmue, Skies of Arcadia, Grandia 2, Bangai-O, Crazy Taxi, Mars Matrix, Capcom vs. SNK, Mark of the Wolves, Sword of the Berserk... and if you played imports, Shenmue 2, Headhunter, Ikaruga, Zero Gunner 2, Rez, Guilty Gear X...

    To sum it up -- the Dreamcast was a great machine with a kickass library.

    --
    Circumcision is child abuse.
  2. Re:He makes the arguement that it's about software by MemoryDragon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The reason was neither piracy nor bad games. Piracy existed but I rather doubt it killed the Dreamcast, what killed the dreamcast was given the existing interviews which clearly stated the sales numbers, was the PS2 and its dvd capability.
    If you watch the interviews then you would know one day before the PS2 was out the sales were excellent and then the day the PS2 came out the sales took a nosedive never to recover again, and the PS2 in the beginning also was used as a DVD player by a load of people.