The Tragic Failure of the Sega Dreamcast
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- čas přidán 3. 06. 2024
- A comprehensive look at the history of the Sega Dreamcast: Why Sega made the Dreamcast, what made it so unique, and why it ultimately failed.
The Sega Dreamcast was first released in Japan on November 27th, 1998, and was the first 6th generation console on the market. The product of a floundering Sega, the company had hoped the Dreamcast would reclaim their once prominent position in home consoles and gaming in general. The Dreamcast not only boasted significantly improved graphics and sound compared to prior generations, but had a truly excellent selection of games along with a massive advertising budget. While the Dreamcast had every reason to succeed, the sheer popularity of Sony's PS1 and PS2 made it difficult to compete, and contributed heavily to the Dreamcast's ultimate failure. In spite of this, the Dreamcast is still looked back upon fondly as a truly unique console with an unrivaled library.
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Music used: pastebin.com/YDwfQXHD
Chapters:
0:00 - Intro
1:02 - The 90's - The Genesis
2:26 - The 90's - The Saturn
4:53 - The Dreamcast - Development and Success
8:32 - The Dreamcast - Decline
11:04 - The Pros - Hardware
13:00 - The Pros - Software
14:59 - The Cons
18:00 - Sega after the Dreamcast
20:32 - Remembering the Dreamcast
22:30 - Outro
Thanks:
Arisu
Joey
Walter
Brett
Vinguin
Daga
Kalani
CTO
#dreamcast #sega
This video is an opinion and in no way should be construed as statements of fact. All references, articles, and posts come from publicly available websites, forums, and documents, and are linked in the description. Any errors or inaccuracies should be thought of as accidental and unintentional. - Zábava
The Dreamcast to me feels like hearing about a really cool restaurant only after it closed. People loved it so much they talk obsessively about the dishes and how they tried to make the recipes at home, and the old chef works at another restaurant that also has really good food; but you feel almost like you just had to have been at the original joint to really experience it.
Solid analogy, basically my perspective as well. Nostalgia is obviously a factor in this high regard for the Dreamcast, but the sheer amount of praise and love for this console kinda speaks for itself.
@@CiggySnake I feel like it was ahead of its time with a lot of the features found in current gen consoles. Like the online features etc. I owned one, thought it was a good console. Just had stiff competition with the PS2 dominating that era and Sega not having the money to compete.
SEGA's approach to hardware from 1992 on was to drop off another unannounced albatross with few games, poor development tools, and then discontinue the hardware two years after selling it. SEGA was on deathwatch before the rushed release of the Saturn.
The Dreamcast wasn’t a failure. It was a gift to gaming in the last console generation where consoles truly mattered and were unique
Didn't even know the Dreamcast could play custom music CDs, nor that they were the reason Dreamcast games were so easy to pirate.
The Dreamcast is the only console from the sixth generation I’ve managed to hold on to. All my other consoles have died/been traded away but this little guy has stuck with me. It’s not alive for lack of use either, it’s a really robustly designed machine in stark contrast to some other consoles I’ve had to bury down the line.
That makes one of us thenI owned 2 dreamcasts brand new and both failed within a year apart. Dreamcast was a great console w good games but a lot of people had the same issues… dreamcast died worse than maybe anyother console I dont even think the 360s ribg of death was as bad
The Dreamcast was like the Wii of the 90s.
Had Sega not completely flopped with the CD, 32X, and especially Saturn, and had the Dreamcast supported DVD playback, it could have been the best selling console of the time.
It deserved better, yeah. Sega had tarnished their reputation off their hardware failures, and the ease of piracy/lower capacity with GD-ROMs further hampered the Dreamcast
I look back on the Dreamcast fondly. Talking about it makes me really emotional. I probably have the fondest memories with that system over any other. More than the N64, more than the GameCube, more than the GBA, and even more than my favorite console, the Genesis. ChuChu Rocket. Power Stones 1 & 2. Sonic Adventure. NFL & NBA 2K. I didn't own a ton of games for my Dreamcast as a kid, but the ones I did own were some of the best times I had picking up a controller. I miss those days.
I hope you owned Shenmue as well! 👍
@@leadme2thebliss21 I never owned Shenmue, sadly.
The loss of hardware really made Sega feel like they lost their mojo as a creative powerhouse. Despite a handful of really inspired games, such as Super Monkey Ball/2, Billy Hatcher, and F-Zero GX, Sega's studios took a nosedive as early as the back-half of the PS2/GC/Xbox's life, and Sonic Unleashed feels like the very final time Sega ever felt like a true AAA production company. Quality-wise, outside of Yakuza, they've neglected Sonic and PSO, and have largely abandoned their entire catalogue of franchises, which once rivaled Nintendo in diversity. This is why I really wish they were a console maker again; they are second only to Nintendo in the IPs they have on hand: IPs that could go toe-to-toe with Sony's best and thoroughly outclass every Xbox offering. Instead, the entire game industry outside of Nintendo chases hyper-realism and feels depressingly stale, and Sega's efforts outside of Yakuza, such as Sonic Forces (which was so bad it burned me out on video games as a whole for 5 years) and Super Monkey Ball BBHD/Banana Mania, have felt broken and overall cheap. My interest in Sega flatlined in 2017 and it never really came back; I don't care about the company as it is anymore, and the cycle of hoping they'll ever remotely be as good as they once were only to be repeatedly disappointed has me ready to just leave them behind for good.
The tragedy of the Dreamcast for me is that "better" consoles like the Xbox 360, Wii, PS3, 3DS, and Wii U never remotely reached the heights of enjoyment I'd gotten out of it. Maybe the DS and Switch have encroached upon it, but the industry overall just hasn't really felt all too fun without Sega delivering quality IP after quality IP like they used to
I feel the Dreamcast was a perfect storm of sorts, a largely competent and interesting console when Sega was in a creative golden age. The quality of Sega's work at the time is a major reason the Dreamcast is so beloved imo. However, said creative golden age more than petered out by the 7th generation, so who's to say the Sega Venus or Dreamcast 2 wouldn't be an absolute wash for Sega?
Probably my favourite Dreamcast game will always be Blue Stinger... Sadly, it never got a sequel or even a port to other "more popular" consoles, so many probably never got to experience it!😥
the existence of sega consoles were just to pave the way for seaman to exist. once seaman was finally made, there was simply no more need for sega to be in the console market. in that regard, i consider the dreamcast to be a success.
The only correct take
I never owned the Sega Dreamcast, but I remember playing on the Sega Dreamcast demo kiosk at a JCPenny retail store with my younger brother. It was probably the year 1999 or 2000.
Great vid, first time I heard a full explanation of the Dreamcasts piracy problem, at a time where even PS1's CD piracy was an early issue developers dealt with, looked like a cakewalk by comparison.
Thanks man, glad you enjoyed it. Yeah, I think Sega wanted to one-up the PS1's ability to play music CDs, but just shot themselves in the foot with one of the most easily piratable data mediums ever conceived. Later models of the Dreamcast actually had their ability to read MIL-CDs removed, but by then it was way too late.
loved the dreamcast , the ps2 was awsome but the dreamcast did it first
got one christmas 99 for the upcoming code veronica release. solid console. Played it a lot for about a year until I got my ps2
The Dreamcast was really too good to fail like that ...
can’t believe you only have 5k subs! glad to be relatively early. keep up the great work!
It's appreciated man, just trying to make content I myself would watch
@@CiggySnake well so far you’re doing a great job of it!
Solid video, great work, in the wise words of a certain Star Wars character, "We will watch your career with great interest".
I appreciate it man, thanks
you forgot to talk about dreamcast supporting 480p via vga which even ps2,gamecube and xbox did not have
Not using the Segata Sanshiro character to market the Dreamcast in Japan was also Sega's biggest mistake. The Sanshiro character was the reason the Sega Saturn was a success in Japan as it persuade the audience to see why the Saturn was serious and fun, but dropping the character altogether just cause they don't want to pay the actor anymore means the Sega Dreamcast is just a boring system in Japan so not many was attracted to the console.
Is that why they killed off Segata?
incredible as always, ciggith cigar. Glad this video came out as well as it did, I highly anticipated it
Man said moribund! 10 points for Ciggy! Nice work on the vid!
Whipping out the SAT words
Discovered your channel through the Woodstock 99 video. You make quality content.
I appreciate it man, glad you enjoyed both vids, and I hope you find the rest of my channel interesting/engaging.
Ive played metropolis street racer, a lot with my dad.. i was about 10 11ish.. never forget that experience.😊
Terrific video and 100% with you on Dreamcast. Much enjoyed from London Eng.
I appreciate it man, glad you enjoyed/agreed with it
o7 for the Dreamcast. Gone, but never forgotten
very nice video as always ciggy! I don't think I ever really thought about how a bunch of my old favorite ps2 games were dreamcast ports lol, still hop on space channel 5 from time to time
I commented on your first video and im here again. the quality of your videos are impeccable, keep going bro this is a million dollar channel in the making. ita just you vs the algorithm
I really appreciate it man, thanks you. It feels like something of a slog, just praying the algorithm picks up my channel to a more meaningful degree, but here's hoping I guess.
i looked into this console a while back and concluded it was pretty neat and that i liked RE:code veronica. thank you for adding to the dreamcast cult propaganda with this EXPERTLY crafted video, cigmund friend
The Dreamcast is one of my all time favourite consoles and will always be the best console of all time for me, the generation of today take things for granted because what they don’t realize is that if it wasn’t for the Dreamcast establishing online gaming as a thing albeit at slow speeds of 56k dialup speeds, you kids of today wouldn’t have your PSN, Xbox Live and Nintendo Eshop or Nintendo online without the Dreamcast existing, you owe it to Sega for literally being the first to think having a console being able to play games with other people over the internet. You wouldn’t be able to get online with todays consoles if it wasn’t for Sega, I wished they still existed in the hardware market. They were the best in the 90’s and they took chances and were very different than there competitors like Nintendo and Sony at the time.
How many more sega documentaries do we need? It flopped we get it already.
Fantastic video! Definitely informative and entertaining. Keep up the good work.✌️
Enjoyed this well-done and informative video. Always learn something new from you.
3 major things that severely fcked over th DReamcast:
1: Sega's consistent mismanagement in the late Genesis and Saturn Era erorded a lot of trust
2:Sega really wanted to usetheir own proprietary format for game media with the Gd-Rom but the Dreamcast's design being based on the Naomi(an arcade machine) and their sistence that people would be using these systems as karaoke machines made the madd support for a feature that would ultimately crac ktheir console open to piracy: the Mil-Cd format was a mistake.
3:there was another big thing in tech atthe time of the DC's launch....Dvd players were also entering the market and while their initial costs were prohibitive sega's timining opened up to what would become their deathblow: the fact that the upcoming Playstation 2 by Sony has a dvd drive built in and had player capability: this made the PS2 the cheapest Dvd Player of its time in the market.Combined with a meager but solid launch library this was what stalled the Dreamcast's ability ot gain further share in the market.
Nice vid, ciggy
Another quality video. Keep it up, dude!
Only the most ignorant gamers ignored the Dreamcast or wrote it off, Real gamers were having an amazing time with it when it came out.
great video, very informative yet concise.
btw based ost choice
I appreciate it man
The Sega Saturn, Cd and Dreamcast did pretty well in Japan and for the Saturn they had alot of accessories for it like the Mpeg movies, alot of Arcade ports and a huge library at the time. Anywhere else not so well and same for Genesis and cd
And in Eu the Genesis(Megdrive) did good too
Another thing that didn't help was Sega was very heavy focused on Arcade like games while Ps1, Ps2, N64, Xbox and Gamecube where more focused on home like games, when the Arcades where on their way out
Sega had a pretty strong emphasis on arcade gaming throughout the 90's, and Japan has always had a much stronger arcade culture (especially in that time period). That helped carry sales and interest in their Japanese markets (the Saturn outsold the N64 in Japan for example), but as you said arcades were really on their way out everywhere else, hampering Sega outside of Japan.
The Saturn did well in Japan, the Dreamcast didn't.
You forgot Emulation. With dreamcast factory you could make a cd with an emulator and all the roms ready to boot. Probably didn't help with sales either. It's sad that it died becuase my first time playing Soul Reaver was on the dreamcast and the graphics were superior to the Playstation version. The PC version was just a Playstation port so to this day it looks better on dreamcast than a high end PC.
Even with emulation the Sega Dreamcast still sucks, while you could indeed emulate PS1 games for play on Dreamcast with varied result, the issue came with the Sega Dreamcast controller. The PS1 controller had 8 buttons with the Dual Shock controller having 10 buttons if you count the L3 and R3 complete with dual sticks, the Dreamcast controller only had a measly 6 buttons, no SELECT button, no second stick, no L2, L3, R2 and R3 buttons either so even if you could play some PS1 games on it, you can't play PS1 games with full functionality especially those that took advantage of the second stick and SELECT, L2, L3, R2, and R3 buttons. It's really sad. The most sad is even if it was backwards compatible with Sega Saturn games, it wouldn't work fully either as the Saturn controller had 8 buttons so the Dreamcast is still missing two more buttons from the Saturn limiting its capability even further.
Another downfall of "console" video. Perfect for my dinner show
The backward vintage views of Bernie Stolar is what was screwing up Sega for years. Dreamcast was hot but lost its lead and it had a amazing line up of games. It wasn't exactly big brain to shut out RPGS, say No More Tekken and other games that blockbuster titles paved the way for the modern scene. RIP Bernie, Sega canned you far too late.
I think what killed the console was SEGA execs were too eager to get it released before the competition it felt like short term solution to a long term problem. Instead of winning the war of attrition they jumped right out of the gate before the Sony could show their hand with ps2 and adjust accordingly. If SEGA waited they could've collaberated with Microsoft you never know we could've gotten the sega Xbox.
People were hyping up and looking forward to the PS2 even by the time the Dreamcast came out; they were going up against an eventual juggernaut with insane hype backing it. Rushing it was the best, worst move they had, the tech was decent it's just GD-ROMs were an awful move.
A Sega Microsoft collab could gave been interesting, yeah, who knows.
Naw. They didn't have the ability to wait and they did approach Microsoft a couple times, first in wanting to be bought by Microsoft so they could launch the Xbox as a continuation of Sega, then later to make the Xbox backwards compatible with the Dreamcast, Microsoft said no to both(obviously)
Yeah, you're right, best console ever!
Pretty good video, you earned a sub!
Glad you enjoyed it man, thanks
First. And I loved my Dreamcast.
it s the games,lack of good fps the biggest genre at the time....the dreamcast only had decent sales in the usa thanks to the sport line up.
marketing was so bad. how was a mom suppose to know what the thing was. so easy to miss.
Dreamcast failed because Sega didn't want to make another hard to develop for console, so they made the Dreamcast really really easy to develop for, too easy actually, whixh lead to piracy. You could rent Dreamcast games, copy the games on the PC at home and just return the rented copy, keeping your brand new copy you just made, people even started making custom cases with covers.
Then when it became obvious how easy the games were to pirate, people realised how easy the system was to emulate and thus Dreamcast now has the best emulators of any console of that era and beyond, being even easier to emulate than the Saturn. This also is the reason why the HomeBrew scene on the Dreamcast was so huge for so long.
Sega tried to undo all the mistakes they made with the Saturn by going in exactly the opposite direction with the Dreamcast, which ultimately lead to equally extreme problems in reverse.
I feel the core issue here is just the ease of copying and piracy. Sega's anti-piracy measures proved to be non-existant, and GD-ROMs were a half-baked and terrible idea, even if DVDs were still expensive. Hell, the use of DVDs for the Dreamcast might have helped prevent piracy in itself due to the newness and greater cost of the technology on the end of the pirates.
Regarding the openness and ease of development for the dreamcast, I feel that was ultimately more of a positive; it made it easy for third parties to develop on it more than anything, and any unlicensed or fan games made for the dreamcast just increased its popularity.
@@CiggySnake dude it made the console easy to pirate, you can make any excuses you want, but how open the software was, contributed massively to why there was fully working emulators available to download on your PC before the PS2 even released.
I know because i basically played all my Dreamcast games emulated on PC and they all worked perfectly.
The reason why it only sold 10m units is literally because you did not have to buy the console to even play any of the games and even if you did buy the console you could burn the games on another disc and play that instead. Buy racks of DVD discs for half the cost of one game, you can't tell me it wasn't viable dude.
If you're saying that dreamcast emulation on PC was popular and viable during the console's lifetime, then that's not something I was aware of. That's interesting, and yes, I can see how that would have contributed to the Dreamcast's ultimate failure.
playing dc games on pc in 2000,nice joke@@rezarfar
It failed cause two guys and a man in his 90s who couldn't get a grasp on reality
Who are you referring to?
The Dreamcast wasn't the problem, SEGA was the problem lol
Not just that imo, the Saturn and arguably the Genesis/Megadrive add-ons had dragged the Sega name by the time the Dreamcast came out, but at the same time the PS1 and eventual PS2 were enormous and dominated the console space at the time.
Sonic Adventure 2 is _not_ a perfect game.
Your fate is sealed
Sega creamcast😏
Downvoted. Any internet echo Chamber person saying the saturn is designed for 2d and not 3d did not research the nonsense they claim. 😅❤
Lololol funny story. I never got this thing when it came out, but my rich friend did. He suuucked at resident evil code veronica and had me play it for him. Mannn it was like... Noticeably harder than previous resident evils at the time but then guess what happened?
I was far into the game. Very close to the end. No more healing herbs : (
And I was already in caution mode limping.
Ran into mutant steve...
Game literally requires you to be in green health so you can side strive his axe swing attacks quickly enough to escape him. Me being wounded with no health items meant I was too slow so I could only die... again... and again...... and again... Reloading the nearest save was hours ago... I cursed the console and game ever since lolz. Never beat it : (
It was a pretty great console though lookin back : )
Really dug powerstone. The smash brothers of the dreamcast : )
But mannn that resident evil experience made me so pissed lolololol
It was a piece of shit console.
I wish everyone would stop fawning over it.
It sucked in 1999 and still sucks in 2023.
It will still suck for far into the future.
By what metric(s) was the Dreamcast so bad in your opinion?
@CiggySnake
Games sucked as 98% of them were just PS1 and N64 ports with just slightly better resolution.
The controller only had one stick, and games in the next generation started to require 2.
GD rom drive, loud, they break down easy and held less data than even the GameCube.
It also was far weaker than the PS2.
Shall I keep going?
You smoking something fr
@@HavelsRing96
Stating facts.
I'll agree there were hardware issues/oversights with the Dreamcast (only 6th Gen console to use CDs rather than DVDs, no second joystick, etc.), but the Dreamcast had plenty of quality titles, and I feel I listed many of the noteworthy ones in the video. I don't get your line about how 98% of the DC's games were just ports.