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Dreamcast Postmortem
by Steven Kent for Gamers Today
Sega's Dreamcast seemed to do everything right during its brief 16 months of existence. It was competitively priced, had one of the best and most rapidly expanding libraries of games in history, and came with a modem. What could possibly have gone wrong?
Dreamcast's biggest weakness, one that plagued it even before it was launched in the United States, was perception. People perceived both Dreamcast and Sega as weak, and nothing Sega could do would change that perception. Sega CD, 32X, Nomad, Pico, and especially Saturn -- short-lived Sega game hardware --became big topics of discussion during the weeks leading up to the launch of Dreamcast.
It was a fair concern, but Sega had the right answers. Sega executives were committed to Dreamcast and the company's hardware hopes would live or die with that system.
People also perceived Dreamcast as less powerful than PlayStation 2 and other upcoming systems. They had a point. The world no longer measures game technology in megahertz and processor bits; the new buzzword is polygon counts. After all is said and done, graphics have become an important yardstick for measuring hardware quality. In straight comparisons, PlayStation 2 generated several times more polygons than Dreamcast, and Sony brilliantly made sure everybody knew it.
Dreamcast became entangled with the memories of Atari Jaguar and 3DO Multiplayer-systems that came out early and lacked the power to compete. But perception did not match reality in this case. Though Dreamcast could not match PlayStation 2's polygon counts, it was easier to program, and easier programming results in better use of existing power.
Back in fall 1999, when Dreamcast was new and had the next-generation market entirely to itself, Sega had less trouble getting its message out. Sony launched PlayStation 2 in Japan six months after Dreamcast's U.S., and from that point on, Sega struggled. "When you consider the strength of the PlayStation 2 hype, the cost of marketing a new platform in the North American market...," commented Charles Bellfield , Sega's vice president of marketing and corporate communications in America, on the day Dreamcast was officially discontinued, January 30.
"When you consider that Microsoft has announced a $500 million marketing program for the launch of Xbox, that Nintendo has a $5 billion war chest, and the overall power behind Sony's PlayStation brand, Sega does not have the ability to compete against those companies."
Concerns about Sega's commitment proved unfounded. Sega and partners released more than 200 games. With the 30 additional games still coming, Dreamcast will have a larger and more distinguished library than Nintendo 64.
Also, it should be noted that Hisao Okawa, the chairman of Sega and the richest man in Japan, has now forwarded his company over $1.2 billion of his own money. Let no one say that Sega went down without a fight.
Having abandoned hardware, Sega is no longer Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft's concern. Now it will be Electronic Arts that sees Sega as a thorn in its side as they go head-to-head.
Ironically, Electronic Arts may be partially to blame for the demise of Dreamcast. EA and Square Soft were the two most notable holdouts that ever published games for the Sega game console. Now that Dreamcast is gone, they must now deal with a software-only Sega as a competitor. Perhaps, making games for Dreamcast would not have been such a bad move after all.
Steven Kent is the author of The First Quarter: A 25-Year History of Video Games, which can be purchased at Amazon
