Sony, MS, mainstream gaming and the end of Sega hardware

[east of eastside]

Disclaimer:  This topic is for fun..    A challenge of objectivity and analysis. This is not a holy war,  :twisted:  let's keep emotion out of it.

The whole phat failure issue has remarkably resurrected the who killed DC question.  I contend the matter has not been definitively answered and for the sake of reclaiming history I want to make that the goal of this thread. Though this is more about the decline and end of Sega hardware and not just DC.

I'm going to respond to George's quote from the phat failure thread that I pulled out of there so not to twist that matter.

Sony didn't kill the DC, SEGA not having money killed the DC. If anything, Microsoft over flooding the market had more to do with DC's plug being pulled than Sony, since the 'death' note was passed months after Xbox was announced. How would SEGA promote a console they had no money to promote against the Xbox and billions of dollars backing it up.

In saying that, you must recall that Microsoft stated that it entered the game business as a competitive response to the threat of Sony taking over the living room.  So, I state in terms of causes, Sony's entrance was the single greatest factor that led to the decline of Sega hardware.  Imagine N64 vs Saturn without Sony.. Gamecube vs Dreamcast..  DC2 vs Revolution or whatever.. Sony and MS = mainstream gaming and Sega declining market significance.

To say that Sony killed Sega hardware is in an accuracy, but in terms of cause an effect it was the single great causal factor, all of Sega's internal problems aside.  That being said, Sony's entrance and thus Sega's hardware decline was really an inevitable consequence of the growing success of the game industry.

Responses..

[Sega Uranus]

If SEGA did not have such an easy to pirate console and did not lose all of the support with all of those publishers and did not spend so much money on games like Shenmue, Skies of Arcadia and some other stuff, I still think they would have had a hard time holding up against PlayStation 2 and Xbox having DVD players. It was the only logical step for videogames to progress to, I mean they read CDs, so why not just let me read every disc I have?

IMHO SEGA being a third party is way better for them. They have more creative freedom and more options with how they develop games, but I guess at the same time it is hard to make Sonic games anywhere near the quality they used to be with this, and that is the major issue with SEGA's image.

Of course, at the end of the day I would always prefer just having a SEGA console, but oh well. I will always love SEGA the most, but I like to try other kinds of games out too.

[Waffle]

The man who owned the company dying killed SEGA. They lost all their funding, which caused a split-up. Then when the Microsoft/EA dickhead canceled the Dreamcast, half the company quit, effectively killing it. Not much of a point to have all these IPs with barely any staff or experienced people.

[George]

Errrr...

Dreamcast was suppose to be a mainstream console. With games like Space Channel 5, a early casual game that (now) is a really popular genre. It also had its own football franchise, arcade ports a plenty (casual in Japan).

Saturn is more 'hardcore' .

SEGA could have came in 2nd if they had the money Microsoft had with Xbox, but they did not. They were selling at a smaller lost compared to MS, not to mention they had about 10 million units ahead of Nintendo and Microsoft before they launched.

[east of eastside]

If you have a sprained ankle and a fever and you're wrestling your friends in your backyard and a couple 400lb giants step in and squash you, is it the fault of the fever and ankle you got crushed?

The video game industry was a niche industry before Sony and MS showed up and broke the mainstream barriers and took gaming to the mass audiences in a big way.  Sega had the adequate resources to continue to be the number two player in a niche industry, but it did not have the resources to fight one, let alone, two consumer electronic giants.

Even if Genesis had thrived a year more in the USA, 32X and Sega CD never existed, Saturn hadn't been bad hardware, and Sega wasn't in financial peril in the DC years, there is no way, no way it would be a 4 horse race today.

Errrr...

Dreamcast was suppose to be a mainstream console. With games like Space Channel 5, a early casual game that (now) is a really popular genre. It also had its own football franchise, arcade ports a plenty (casual in Japan).

Dreamcast was the last console (unless you want to count GC) made under the video games for gamers, niche-industry paradigm.  That does not neglect the fact that Pacman, Mario, Sonic, DK, etc broke into mainstream appeal during that era..  If DC tried to have mainstream appeal it was because the market was obviously already turning that way... I would say DC was less mainstream than PS1..  Even it's internet features weren't as mainstream because internet adoption grew greatly after 2000..  DC simply was no where to the degree as mainstream as PS2, Xbox, DVD, GTA, Halo, etc.

Even Moore acknowledges DC's lack of mass appeal:

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6217053.html


Peter Moore talks Dreamcast 10 years later

GS: Some of the Dreamcast's best-loved and most memorable games--Shenmue, Jet Grind Radio, Skies of Arcadia, Seaman, Crazy Taxi--were original intellectual properties. Was there too much of an emphasis on these original and unproven franchises?

PM: We really didn't--maybe with the exception of Sonic Adventure--have that game that was aimed at a broad mass market that could really be the "killer app" to drive the hardware.

[MadeManG74]

The fact is, Video games died with Space Wars. Nolan Bushnell came in and forced the industry into this stupid fad of 'Casual' games by introducing the ultra mainstream 'Dial Controls'. This in turn lead to even more casualisation and mainstreamification of the industry by leading to things like Buttons and Sticks for controls, until it went to the ultimate depths of using D-Pads for home consoles.

You look at the REAL games that REAL gamers play. There was no mainstream controls, but rather we had the TRUE HARDCORE controls: Switches. Using Switches is the only way to play video games, anything else is just pandering to the mainstream. Not to mention that back then, you couldn't just go down to any mass market "everyone can join" Shop to buy games, no you had to make your own goddamned punch-cards to mod Space Wars!

When games were made for GAMERS not everyone, things were much better. We had unrivaled creativity and freedom to create  real ART not just commecial games made for mass consumption. Look at great, true games like Tennis for Two the oscilloscope allowed for a brilliant minimalist and niche interpretation of Tennis, something that would NEVER sell today.

Then of course you look at something like Space Wars, just a genious idea, setting a game in outer-space! But then of course, when Pong came along, and Atari ruined gaming forever with their casual controls and making games so mainstream they actually placed arcade machines in public places, EVERYONE decided to rip-off space wars and make soulless mainstream versions. Gone was the niche aspects like having 2 ships fighting eachother and using switches to control it, and in came casual features like ONE SHIP (!!) and shooting asteroids instead (No doubt to make it more family friends for SOCCER MOMS and GRANDPARENTS to play it  :roll: ). It's no coincidence that that one machine that played Space Wars in Stamford University started getting less traffic after Atari's success. Something to think about.

[George]

If you have a sprained ankle and a fever and you're wrestling your friends in your backyard and a couple 400lb giants step in and squash you, is it the fault of the fever and ankle you got crushed?

The video game industry was a niche industry before Sony and MS showed up and broke the mainstream barriers and took gaming to the mass audiences in a big way.  Sega had the adequate resources to continue to be the number two player in a niche industry, but it did not have the resources to fight one, let alone, two consumer electronic giants.

Even if Genesis had thrived a year more in the USA, 32X and Sega CD never existed, Saturn hadn't been bad hardware, and Sega wasn't in financial peril in the DC years, there is no way, no way it would be a 4 horse race today.

Errrr...

Dreamcast was suppose to be a mainstream console. With games like Space Channel 5, a early casual game that (now) is a really popular genre. It also had its own football franchise, arcade ports a plenty (casual in Japan).

Dreamcast was the last console (unless you want to count GC) made under the video games for gamers, niche-industry paradigm.  That does not neglect the fact that Pacman, Mario, Sonic, DK, etc broke into mainstream appeal during that era..  If DC tried to have mainstream appeal it was because the market was obviously already turning that way... I would say DC was less mainstream than PS1..  Even it's internet features weren't as mainstream because internet adoption grew greatly after 2000..  DC simply was no where to the degree as mainstream as PS2, Xbox, DVD, GTA, Halo, etc.

Even Moore acknowledges DC's lack of mass appeal:

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6217053.html


Peter Moore talks Dreamcast 10 years later

GS: Some of the Dreamcast's best-loved and most memorable games--Shenmue, Jet Grind Radio, Skies of Arcadia, Seaman, Crazy Taxi--were original intellectual properties. Was there too much of an emphasis on these original and unproven franchises?

PM: We really didn't--maybe with the exception of Sonic Adventure--have that game that was aimed at a broad mass market that could really be the "killer app" to drive the hardware.

Sorry but there were a ton of games on Dreamcast designed for the mainstream in mind. Crazy Taxi was huge success for SEGA and most of my friends all know that arcade/dreamcast , even if they don't know many other SEGA games.

Space Channel 5 was designed to be a casual game from the start and even had a 'Hollywood' premiere when it was released.

SEGA had a deal with Fred Durst, who was really mainstream artist at the time, to promote the Dreamcast and games for it to the public.

When was selling 10 million units in under 3 years considered niche?

[east of eastside]

Sorry but there were a ton of games on Dreamcast designed for the mainstream in mind. Crazy Taxi was huge success for SEGA and most of my friends all know that arcade/dreamcast , even if they don't know many other SEGA games.

Space Channel 5 was designed to be a casual game from the start and even had a 'Hollywood' premiere when it was released.

SEGA had a deal with Fred Durst, who was really mainstream artist at the time, to promote the Dreamcast and games for it to the public.

You would have to admit that Crazy Taxi and Space Channel 5 had a tiny fraction of the mainstream awareness that games like Halo and GTA reached.

When was selling 10 million units in under 3 years considered niche?

Well, when you consider that a really mainstream product like ipod did twice that last quarter, it kind of puts it in perspective.  3.3 million annual sales would be dreadful for any console today, you know that Wii did that and more in December.

We are talking in terms of degrees... NES had giant sales and Gameboy did too, but the game industry was still regarded as niche in terms of number of households with game consoles and industry size.. The industry exploded in size in the last decade keep in mind.  When I say niche, it is in relative terms, but check this article out for perspective:

http://www.destructoid.com/sony-we-brok ... 6032.phtml

"The most successful console is still the PS2 and it's still going strong," claims Hirai, comparing a console released nine years ago to a console released three years ago. "I think that's the console that really broke the barrier from videogames being just for videogamers into more of a mass market on a global basis. Nintendo's obviously done a great job in following that mass acceptance."

[/color]

I agree with Kaz that the industry had a shift from the games for gamer's era that existed pre-playstation to mass market, wide demographic status of today.  I think you would agree with that.  The gaming demographic changed significantly from the past getting wider every successive generation after 16bit.. First older and wider with PS1.. Then a lot wider with PS2 and Xbox, and finally, basically games for everybody under Wii.

I know this isn't really compelling but look at how the head of Radical Entertainment describes the industry in a 2004 interview:

"Video game consoles are in one-third of North American households," said Michael. "It is still very much a niche industry.

"The good news is that this industry has everywhere to grow. Video games have not reached the mass market -- there is the potential for them to be as ubiquitous a form of entertainment as television."

Yes, games had a mainstream presence in the DC era and going back to NES and earlier with Pac Man but no where to the degree they have now.

Sony, after all, is arguably responsible for transforming the marketplace from the narrow group of so-called “hardcore gamers” that it once was into a more diverse, more casual group of consumers.

Basically I would agree with this summation as well..

[Autosaver]

I think Microsoft helped ruined the DC.

As on the Sega boards, there was an article that was talking about DC/Xbox using similar codes. I think I even saw that they were supposed to play each other games.

Bungie worked on the DC right? Imagine Halo on the DC... could it make millions like it did with Microsoft? Would Sega be rich with milking the franchise?

[Monkeroony]

If SEGA did not have such an easy to pirate console and did not lose all of the support with all of those publishers and did not spend so much money on games like Shenmue, Skies of Arcadia and some other stuff, I still think they would have had a hard time holding up against PlayStation 2 and Xbox having DVD players. It was the only logical step for videogames to progress to, I mean they read CDs, so why not just let me read every disc I have?

IMHO SEGA being a third party is way better for them. They have more creative freedom and more options with how they develop games, but I guess at the same time it is hard to make Sonic games anywhere near the quality they used to be with this, and that is the major issue with SEGA's image.

Of course, at the end of the day I would always prefer just having a SEGA console, but oh well. I will always love SEGA the most, but I like to try other kinds of games out too.

This

/end thread

[crackdude]

I think Microsoft helped ruined the DC.

As on the Sega boards, there was an article that was talking about DC/Xbox using similar codes. I think I even saw that they were supposed to play each other games.

Bungie worked on the DC right? Imagine Halo on the DC... could it make millions like it did with Microsoft? Would Sega be rich with milking the franchise?

I was just posting on this..

I've read that deals were being made at the time of the Xbox development for it to read Dreamcast games. Still it didn't come to fruition because MS didn't want to give the games online support or something.
Sega and MS were working closely at the time. Maybe Sega's chance back then would have been to co-develop the Xbox.

Then again that would mean that MS would eventually buy Sega and that would suck.

The Xbox was hardly the problem. The Xbox came out to go head-on against the PS2. The Dreamcast was already at the corner in fetal position getting ready to die.

I have no idea what the hell I'm saying.

Point is, if there was no PS2, maybe MS would continue to work with Sega. It would have been all Sega vs. Nintendo again.
Or even if MS would still make the Xbox, the Xbox entered the marked from the zero. Sega would have a much less hard battle getting attention from the public.

The sports licenses didn't kill the DC (even though there really wasn't a good soccer game, NFL and NBA obliterated the related EA franchises at the time. They were the best.).
DVD didn't kill the Dreamcast. The fact that the PS2 could read it did.

I may not know all the figures and quotes that you guys bring up. But I do know that back when the DC was around EVERYBODY talked about how the PS2 would be as real as real life and how excited they were about it and how they didn't want to buy the Dreamcast cause they were gathering money to get it.
Something that a lot of kids were talking back then was how racing games on the PS2 were going to be so real that you would need sunglasses to protect your eyes from the virtual sun.
It may sound stupid but all these kinds of rumors just hyped everyone back then.

So my opinion is that Sony did it. And Sega was afraid. That's why all promotion leaflets tried to compare the DC favorably to the PS2 for example. Not to mention the obvious commercials that trashed Sony.

This is my opinion.. I doubt any of you can change it, but I don't want to get into any discussions and all..

Just thought I should share it here.

[George]

The Dreamcast was not ready to die, the only people ready to die were SEGA, since they had no money. PS2 or no Xbox; Nintendo alone could have took it out. It wasn't about the competition, it was about not being able to afford keeping up.

Microsoft help SEGA....


Sorry Microsoft does not help, they exploit.

I think DVD was a small hurdle in the begining for DC, but I think people point the finger at the format too much and say "IF IT HAD IT..." if it had a DVD player it would have still been the same thing, only faster. DVD lens cost more money, more lost revenue that SEGA did not have. Sony could afford it, SEGA not so much.

Dreamcast sold 10+ million in  its time, Gamecube sold 21 million without a DVD player. I think if SEGA had the money to keep up with production, they could have easily came in at 2nd for the generation, but then again, this would mean they would have to ship non-pirated DCs (which they were for awhile). At least if they could have 'sold' the units at the same rate that they did before. Might be a bit hard.

Saturn, SEGA CD and 32X wasted cash is what basically killed the Dreamcast. If SEGA better planned the SEGA Saturn and skipped the two add-ons, we would not be talking about what went wrong today.

[crackdude]

"Sorry Microsoft does not help, they exploit."

That's a point of view I'm willing to absorb..

The Saturn wasn't the problem itself. The West marketing however...
Didn't the system succeed in Japan?


But,
Sega could had made profit with the Dreamcast. There were factors that kept it from making it.
The Dreamcast had less than a tenth of the sales the PS2 is still making. All that market was there to be earned. And Sony did it, even if Sega got there way first.

I like to think of the Dreamcast like the last meal of Sega as an hardware manufacture. A vast and delightful last meal.

[east of eastside]

DC's selling wasn't meeting targets after a successful launch to the point that Sega stopped production with millions unsold in the inventory pipeline.  If the console was successful the company would have no problem raising capital to keep the company going..

The market had changed on Sega, the writing was on the wall.

The Dreamcast launch was tremendous, and its sales were actually quite healthy for much of its life, but when Sony arrived with the PlayStation 2, things went sour. In order to stay afloat, the price was slashed repeatedly, falling to $99 in 2001. Manufacturing costs were simply too great.

http://retro.ign.com/articles/102/1021947p1.html

In an aggressive and innovative move, Sega has announced an incredible rebate available to the consumer where one can essentially get a Dreamcast for free!
Current Sega Dreamcast Owners
By signing up for SegaNet, consumers will receive a $200 check and a free keyboard (regardless of when they purchased their system).[/color]

Free DC with SegaNet deal, an obvious sign that the consoles wasn't selling and where was the money going to come from?

""Dreamcast is a fabulous product. It just hasn't caught on. Everybody I talked to loves it. It just hasn't caught on to the mass consumer, and that's unfortunate."- Perrin Kaplan, Nintendo of America executive vice president of sales and marketing, as reported by Gamer's Republic

http://www.1up.com/do/feature?pager.off ... Id=3175865

The Dreamcast was arguably the first casualty of a major shift in the gaming industry, one with even greater scope than the '90s-era transition from bitmaps to polygons. When the Dreamcast died, so too did the concept of videogames as the exclusive province of the hardcore.

When Sega launched the Dreamcast on September 9, 1999, the company focused its sights on the core gaming market with laser precision. Everything about the system's debut was perfectly tuned to be a hit among devoted gamers.

Dreamcast's failure was the result of many factors, but by far the most significant of these was the sheer juggernaut power of the Sony's PlayStation 2.

We were selling 50,000 units a day, then 60,000, then 100,000, but it was just not going to be enough to get the critical mass to take on the launch of PS2. It was a big stakes game. Sega had the option of pouring in more money and going bankrupt, and they decided they wanted to live to fight another day."[/b]

Within Sega, there was always this conversation of, 'We make games really well, but we're not going to be able to compete.' They knew there was room for three consoles, but not four, and they knew Microsoft was coming and couldn't afford to compete with a behemoth like that. So they decided to focus on what they were good at."

Says it all right there.. not the money but the size of the competitors.

[George]

Not only that, instead of meeting the PS2 with software, DC was not releasing much software at the time, it was worse than the Gamecube's end of life. Sure there was a big game, but it was too far inbetween.

People that bought a PS2 either had a DC or were never going to buy a Dreamcast. Sony had almost no mainstream games really when it was launched and was not considered to be a huge huge success till after Metal Gear Solid 2 and Final Fantasy X arrived.

SEGA was ill prepared, you can't cry about competition.

Saying that Sony killed the Dreamcast when it says they couldn't afford it? No, pricing the DC at a lost (which SEGA of Japan was against) was bad, putting in all the resources into one really big budget title (Shenmue) was bad (moving it from Saturn when it was almost complete etc), and mismanaged money (Saturn, 32x and SEGA CD). If they had all that money, the DC would have finished off the generation in 2nd. Not first, Sony won that one by a mile, but coming in at second most likely would have forced Microsoft out.