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Former Sega Prez Discusses the Dreamcast's Failure
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.'"
But it is true that Sony was holding its first golf tournament -- I believe in Napa [California]...I forget which golf course. I had someone go to the golf pro, paid him money to take out all the Sony golf balls and put in Sega golf balls instead.
And I had somebody dressed up as Sonic driving around the course, and skywriters writing 'Dreamcast is coming' up in the air. That part is true, yes.
Sonic Adventure
Sega Rally 2
Virtua Fighter 3
Dead or Alive 2
Soul Calibur
Resident Evil: Code Veronica
Powerstone
Head Hunter
Phantasy Star Online
Skies of Arcadia
That's just a handful I can think of off the top of my head. The hype for the DC was ridiculous at the time for a console.
I agree with him. However, the Dreamcast had some of the best software available, including the best sports games, arcade games and fighting games. I play a lot of RPGs and still think Skies of Arcadia is one of the best ever. It had games that were ported onto XBOX and went on to become some of the best XBOX games. It had cutting edge online gaming with Phantasy Star, innovative arcade adventures like Shemue, and better graphic versions of exisiting hits like Tony Hawk (a truly superior version compared to PS1). So with all that great software, then there's still something missing to his arguement - if it's all about the software, and the dreamcast had a ton of great software, then maybe you need to come up with a better reason why it failed.
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.
The Dreamcast is the correct choice!
Because the syst...
The games are cheap
And Sega is a developer who I respect
And arigato
And you can play Sonic
And Sonic loves us all
And Sonic saves animals
And he doesn't care that Tails is gay
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
even if it had great titles, no one was aware of them.
Exactly the failure of the Dreamcast.
The dreamcast was a huge hit with the hardcore console gaming crowd, but the Spyro/Madden/Final Fantasy crowd that only picks up AAA or high visibility titles didn't care what was on the DC. When you look at games like Legacy of Kain, Shenmue, Capcom vs SNK, the casual gamer responds, "Who's Kain? How do i even pronounce Shenmue? And what's a Snick?"
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Hype? What hype? Here in Switzerland the kids often thought it was the PS2 or X-Box (having no idea about their actual release dates). You need to know that Sega, as far as I know, was never all that popular in Europe. I don't know about the rest of the world, but here nobody even knew they'd made a new console.
Hell, we had to look on the internet (without youtube) for the actual DC commercials since we didn't have even one around here (since Switzerland has German TV stations, I feel safe to say in all German speaking countries, there was a marketing black hole when it comes to that piece of hardware).
The games were great, the hardware was advanced and powerful. Just... nobody knew that.
(and yes, I know he answers it after he refuses to answer, but he gives a shitty answer. He obviously had another answer and changed his tune in mid-song. At least the interview is great for making that clear.)
Translation: I fired the two-thirds of the people working at Sega and built a console that failed, and I'm proud of that.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Does a DVD player make the PS2 a better game system? Sony's hype machine and press ignorance made it seem far more "next-gen" than it actually was. And games like Shenmue, Metropolis Street Racer, Sonic Adventure 2, and Under Defeat show the Dreamcast could hold its own regarding quality graphics.
Well it does not make it a better game system but it helped to sell the hardware. Go to youtube and dig out the IGN dreamcast interviews, all the Sega people interviewed pretty much said that the Dreamcast sales took a nosedive the day the PS2 hit the streets, and that at least in japan the PS2 was heavily used as a DVD player also because it was the cheapest of its time.
(Probably the other countries also used the PS2 heavily as a DVD player). Face it, while nowadays it is unimportant due to having DVD players left and right just like CD burners back then. The time the PS2 came out the DVD functionality was one cornerstone which sank the Dreamcast and almost sank the gamecube.