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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.'"

7 of 86 comments (clear)

  1. Bernie Stolar is my hero by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  2. He makes the arguement that it's about software by joeflies · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    1. 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.

  3. 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.
  4. Re:And here it goes by Trepidity · · Score: 4, Funny

    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
  5. Re:sounds like some rationalization going on by RyuuzakiTetsuya · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.
  6. Re:sounds like some rationalization going on by Kokuyo · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.